How Durable Are the Frets on USA-Made PRS Guitars?

flatfeed611

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I’ve heard that USA-made PRS guitars are known for using high-quality frets and that they tend to be more durable compared to other popular brands.

For those of you who are working musicians and put heavy use on your PRS guitars, have you found this to be true? Are the frets noticeably more durable, or do they hold up about the same as those on guitars from other brands?
 
My 1987 Custom has been re-fretted once. It saw HEAVY use for the first 16 years of its life. I think the factory PRS frets hold up very well. Stainless are longer wearing but personally, I don’t like the change in tone with stainless.
Wow, that's pretty impressive. What string gauge did you use on it, just out of curiosity?
 
I have a few of my PRS that have seen a decent number of gigs and the frets have held up extremely well. You can see a little bit of wear on the frets, especially in the cowboy chord area, but it is not bad at all. I would say they have held up much better than a couple of other brands I have gigged with. I have been using D'Addario EXL110 strings for decades on all of my guitars so that has been a consistent thing across all of the brands of guitars I have gigged. One that I have played a lot from another brand over the past 9 years has stainless steel in it and there is no visible wear on those. If I could get SS frets in a PRS, I would have them. If I ever have to re-fret one of my PRS guitars, I will probably have SS put in it.
 
I got my S2 Vela in January of 2022. I've had the fret's "dusted" 2 times for sure, maybe three. String are EB 10-46. I'm starting to show some wear again. I have other guitars that have had to be refretted because the frets were worked on so many times. I tend to be a bit heavy handed but not quite as bad as I use to be.

Just out of curiousity and generally speaking, how many times can a guitar be refretted before the wood just won't hold the frets any longer?
 
I guess: it depends, would be the best answer.

Wear of frets depends on several factors, time is one, but irrelevant, when you play with low pressure.
Vice versa high pressure gripping could lead within short period of time to enormous wear and a quick appointment with a technician for refretting.
Your individual playing is the key variable in this term.
 
My first custom 24 needed a fret leveling majorly within 5 years. At the time I was an extremely heavy handed aggressive lead player that used a ton of vibrato and deep bends. I would even use vibrato on chords constantly. That said, none of my other guitars wore that quickly.
 
My '92 custom 24 is still running the original frets. I have owned it for 12 years and its my #1 with average gigging 60-75 nights a year (3-4 hours per night) plus rehearsals, Jams etc. Frets definitely show some indents and wear but the guitar plays and sounds so great I don't want to mess with the mojo!
 
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