Why won't PRS offer Stainless frets?

Ascension

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This is one of the major reasons i will not buy a new PRS guitar. I do own a couple core guitars and own and play mostly PRS AMPS but play mostly Carvin Kiesel Guitars. One of the reasons is I absolutely will never buy another new guitar without Stainless frets. I love the 25 scale been mostly playing 25 since the early 90's so the lack of SS frets takes PRS out of consideration in a new purchase..
 
Stainless frets are nice and on 2 of my guitars. I don’t see it as much of an issue bc most people don’t wear out frets. I’ve personally never kept a guitar long enough to wear them out. I did play one until there was signs of fret wear over the course of 5yrs but I ended up selling it for something different. Was probably another 5yrs of heavy playing left on it before a refret would of been needed. I would assume PRSh has weighed the cost benefit of switching over all their tooling to handle that change and deemed it unnecessary right now. Probably makes more financial sense to use the same materials and tools since they offer so many different models and lines I’m sure you can get it on a private stock. It’s also not that expensive to have a guitar refretted if you do want it. I say don’t let that hold you back from a new guitar especially if it will take you a decade of heavy use to ever need to address it.
 
What their norm has been is to use the combination of components that sound best, so that would be my best guess as to why they haven’t offered them: the other type sounds or plays better to them. “To them” is the operative portion of that guess.

I’ve played lots of Carvins over the years, and still have a great DC200. Mine has the standard frets, but the construction is top notch. I hear Kiesel has kept the quality of their predecessor.

If ever my PRS frets actually wear enough to need refretting, I may try stainless frets... just to see what they’re all about.
 
I recall hearing that Paul choose the fret material (not the hardest nickel, but close to) for its sound. This makes some sense. However as Austin said, just get have a re-fret done if its that important.

Personally, I do my own fret dressing. Its time consuming and laborious. The thought of working on stainless steel chills me to the bone.
 
I recall hearing that Paul choose the fret material (not the hardest nickel, but close to) for its sound. This makes some sense. However as Austin said, just get have a re-fret done if its that important.

Personally, I do my own fret dressing. Its time consuming and laborious. The thought of working on stainless steel chills me to the bone.
Ditto to this
 
It's one of those things that I suspect is mostly driven by cost (production time) rather than tone.

Also not everyone wants them, it'd have to be an option which adds production complexity and cost (time, more wear on tools).

I do my own fret dressing, rolled fingerboard edges, polishing and while I still get SS frets all the time on my Warmoth necks I do not enjoy working on them at all.

While a guitar with nickel frets can be built with very "subpar" fret polishing (Core included), you can't do the same with SS frets unless you want them to feel insanely rough. And to get SS frets to feel super smooth requires an awful amount of time and effort.

They are indeed a pain to work with. But if I'm ordering a PS I always get SS frets since I'm not doing the work (you pay dearly for that option by the way).
 
This is one of the major reasons i will not buy a new PRS guitar. I do own a couple core guitars and own and play mostly PRS AMPS but play mostly Carvin Kiesel Guitars. One of the reasons is I absolutely will never buy another new guitar without Stainless frets. I love the 25 scale been mostly playing 25 since the early 90's so the lack of SS frets takes PRS out of consideration in a new purchase..

Why do you like them ? The super smooth bending feel (if polished properly), the incredible longevity, both ?

For me it's both though I've never kept an electric a guitar long enough to have to really worry about fret wear.
However when I compare a Private Stock with heavily polished nickel frets (easily replicated on any guitar) I got to the say the feel is incredibly similar to my Warmoth necks with SS frets.
 
In one of his tone-talks on Youtube (it's in that thread linked above by DISTORT6), Paul indicated that he expects his guitars to last practically up to 10-20 years of hard, hard use without being refretted. Seems to me that he has confidence that the particular fretwire he has made for his Core guitars will last "long enough," compared to SS.

That being said, I do have 2 Suhr's with SS frets and man are they silky-smooth to play. I can only imagine this is a "builder's choice" type of thing--meaning that I see no practical downside at all to owning & playing them; however, they must be a lot harder to install and/or work with because otherwise they'd be THE market standard by now.
 
I love SS too. Even Fender is putting them on now on their new Ultra Luxe models.
 
I'm now absolutely solid on Stainless on any new purchase. I own 11 have 3 with Stainless and those 3 are my main players. With nickle I will dess every 3 or so years and refret ever 10 or so. I own several that i have had over 20 and have to rotate them to keep fret wear down. The Stainless fret guitars I have yet to see any wear on at all. On a standard fret guitar they at first feel similar to stainless but wont last long and will quickly begin to degrade. I simply will not continue to fight this so no Stainless frets no new PRS guitars period no discussion no movement on my end. I'm not paying 3 K plus then doing a refret.
BTW my 07 Custom 24 frets were some of the softer I have encountered love the guitar but only play it out on occasion to keep the fret wear down. Play my Kiesels with stainless instead because i don't have to worry with them changing due to fret wear.
 
I'm now absolutely solid on Stainless on any new purchase. I own 11 have 3 with Stainless and those 3 are my main players. With nickle I will dess every 3 or so years and refret ever 10 or so. I own several that i have had over 20 and have to rotate them to keep fret wear down. The Stainless fret guitars I have yet to see any wear on at all. On a standard fret guitar they at first feel similar to stainless but wont last long and will quickly begin to degrade. I simply will not continue to fight this so no Stainless frets no new PRS guitars period no discussion no movement on my end. I'm not paying 3 K plus then doing a refret.
BTW my 07 Custom 24 frets were some of the softer I have encountered love the guitar but only play it out on occasion to keep the fret wear down. Play my Kiesels with stainless instead because i don't have to worry with them changing due to fret wear.


So...you like stainless frets?
 
I used to be in camp stainless and started getting them on a bunch of Warmoth and Musikraft necks. They felt good but after a while I realized I never really loved any of them. Then I started noticing that the attack of each note had this high pitched ”zzzhhinng” noise and that string rattle and buzzing was a lot more obvious on the guitars with SS frets. I really hate that sound and once you start hearing it, you can’t unhear it. It’s not a problem if you only play with an overdrive or distortion but it’s very noticable with a clean sound or when playing without an amp.
I really don’t think it’s very difficult to make nickel frets feel smooth enough. I do not play professionaly in any way but I do play quite a lot for it being a hobby but I really don’t experience any issues with fret wear. I can understand it being an issue if you only have one or two guitars.

I am very happy with PRS using nickel frets, and the nickel frets they do use is of great quality. It’s one of the best features of the brand to me. I hope they never change to SS.

(For the record, I still own four guitars with SS frets. Two of them will get new necks with nickel frets, the other two will stay as they are because they have matching headstocks. I really don’t want to refret necks if it’s not absolutely necessary.)
 
This is one of the major reasons i will not buy a new PRS guitar. I do own a couple core guitars and own and play mostly PRS AMPS but play mostly Carvin Kiesel Guitars. One of the reasons is I absolutely will never buy another new guitar without Stainless frets. I love the 25 scale been mostly playing 25 since the early 90's so the lack of SS frets takes PRS out of consideration in a new purchase..

OMG the world will end if you aren't a customer any more.

:rolleyes:
 
Why won't PRS offer Stainless frets?

Not enough demand. Period.
#endofdiscussion

Why don't they sell guitars with stainless steel frets?

Because they don't need to (yet).

Huge backlog of orders, and no sign of diminished market interest.

I'm gonna say yes and no on this. If Paul believed they added to the tone, they'd at least be an option. There's a reason he puts every single part on his guitars. Sometimes the consumer finds it hard to trust the expert...
 
Sometimes the consumer finds it hard to trust the expert...

This. It reminds me of the time a group of us from my old job went to a barbecue place that we were fond of. One of our group was a self-proclaimed 'expert' - on just about everything. (True story - he once asked us for the source code to a standard IBM mainframe utility because it didn't do what he wanted it to do, so he was going to 'fix' it.) So we're at the barbecue counter while the guy is pulling the order together, and this guy says, "What kind of wood are you using?" The guy told him, and Mr. Expert says, "You know what you should be using?..." and my buddy (the guy who started us going there) said, "No, no, no - you just stop. I put up with your sh@t at work, but you are not going to sit here and tell a guy who's been in business for 60 years what he's doing wrong. This is my favorite barbecue, and I'm not going to let you f*#% it up."

That place burned down in the last year or so. It had been probably 10 years or more since I'd been there (it's not a great part of town), but I miss it. The old man's son had been running it since the old man died, and he said he'd rebuild, but I haven't seen or heard anything.
 
Oh they WILL do it....it just depends how bad you want them to....

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Worth it? I think it was.....
 
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