A good strategy and I've found it useful, Sterling. I do change frets
about every 5 months usually for the wear. It only takes one plastic
chanterelle to wear a spot down that can't be rotated out. (The best
thing next to gut is gut) If I have to replace a 5th fret I usually 1,
2, 3, and 4 also. Alternate times I change out 6, 7 and 8, too. By then
they usually have a shim or have been tightened.
New frets sounds so much better and require less pressure for a good
clean sound. Having strings stopped at a point, however small, brings
out more string overtones, imho. If I have a good lute and good
strings, I'd rather not cut that corner more than parsimony demands.
Btw, I went with doubled frets for a few years. The flat spot over two
frets can sound dull or buzzy which can be both a bug and a feature. I
went back to single frets because I found it more buggy and spendy than
feature-y. For my doubled frets I used two singles and only replaced
the more worn (the older) of the two, so the 'bridge fret' went nutward
and the new one went to bridge side. Replacing both together always
gave me more buzz than I was comfortable with.
Sean
On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 4:20 AM, spiffys84121
<[1]spiffys84...@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
I was going to make a video, but I think a few words will
suffice.
To tighten a loose fret, move the fret up to a very loose
position
until you can push one end of the fret through the knot. Pull it
as
tight as it will go just as you did when originally tying the
fret.
Usually you will get only a few millimeters of extra. Now, burn
the
existing bit with a soldering iron or match or flame-thrower or
however
you make heat. Put the fret in position. Now you'll never have to
use
ridiculously lame shims under your frets again.
The very first time I put frets on a lute as a kid I said-"oh,
you can
tighten them if they get loose." And ever since then I've
wondered why
people use shims, or even the completely baffling practice of
replacing
loose frets. "Do they," I wondered "replace their shoe laces
every time
they tie their shoes?"
Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think we can end this strange shims
and fret
replacing practice in our lifetimes.
Sterling
Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
To get on or off this list see list information at
[2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. mailto:spiffys84...@cs.dartmouth.edu
2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
