Without knowing the exact alloy material spec, it’s hard to know what we’re even talking about when comparing different manufacturer guitar frets.
“Stainless steel” is an entire class of alloys that breach a certain % amount of chromium/nickel content, and while in general the higher the chromium/nickel content the more superior is the stainless steel, that superiority has more to do with corrosion resistance than hardness. Unless we’re permanently gigging in Atlantis, I don’t think corrosion figures much except for aesthetics.
It’s the hardness that matters here.
Below the stainless steel class in terms of chromium content, there’s a continuum of alloy grades that can actually be harder than official stainless steel. The hardness of the metal actually increases when the chromium drops to a certain low level.
So when we talk stainless steel frets vs alloy frets, we may not even know what we’re talking about, unless we know the exact metal spec.
Factual posts with well-formed thoughts and ideas have no place in this thread. Take your fancy metallurgy somewhere else, pal! Stainless or it’s garbage!
</sarcasm>
@Tonart thank you for sharing your expertise. I suspected that just because PRS doesn’t advertise stainless steel frets doesn’t mean that they are the same material as a bargain basement guitars’ frets.
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