Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all , Im making some les pauls and maybe a prs style guitar. Ive got guitars with the stew mac 150 and 149 fret wire and wondered if there's any preference / opinions on these.
I think I just prefer the 149 and wondered why people would choose the 150 over it. To me , although only marginally bigger it seems a bit clumsier - especially on the upper frets.
150 is the same as the jim dunlop 6100 .110 wide and .057 tall
149 is marginally smaller .104 wide and .047 tall.
149 is used on most prs by the way

My preferred fretwire is the StewMac 150. I like wide frets. It makes them feel less like speed bumps like you get with tall narrow wire.

But if someone wants the standard medium jumbo I use the 149 wire or 154.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My preferred fret wire is the StewMack 0148. I use it on all my acoustics, most electrics and most refrets unless someone asks for something else. I did get blind sided recently - I had a bound board all ready for frets including checking the slot depth with a little piece of 0148 that has the barbs filed off. Plenty of clearance. Then I tapped in some 0149 and it bottomed out. Checked the specs and sure enough the tang is 0.012 deeper.

We refret guitars every week and the largest demographic of our clients are 55 to dead.... males. Many of these guys, who are my age at 62 here don't like jumbo fret wire. They find themselves over compensating and pressing too hard and pulling notes sharp.

As such we are always sure to let folks have choices on an individual basis and the geezer group often will use wire not of the jumbo variety.

With this said who these guitars are intended for should be a huge factor in your selection process and there are no hard fast rules.

One last comment of the famous players who we service their instruments the more pro a player is I've noticed that jumbo wire does not bother them and instead may be specifically requested regardless of age.

And really lastly Jescar wire is way preferable to all others with us and we likely do close to 100 refrets annually. Jescar does now sell in smaller quantities as well and they have other cool products such as the polishes and rubbing compounds.