Saturday, October 8, 2011

'Crystal-isation'

Take a closer look at the frets. They are glittering, isn't?
That is because the fret wires aren't made of metal. There are frets made of ceramics and glasses. For this one, it is made of quartz crystals. It is 'claimed' that quartz crystal frets give more sustain. The hardness of the quartz could be the reason for more sustains. Quartz crystals are harder than metal and can only be cut or polished using diamond cutters. This also means that the metal strings cannot wear down the frets, just like glass. It is not brittle like glass as well.
Here's what the producer has claimed:

Metal frets and a metal string create a natural distortion due to metal on metal contact.

It sounds logical but maybe I'm too deaf to hear that noise as it is mentioned above. And I bet this is not going to be cheap at all.

4 comments:

subversion.sg said...

Conclusion: Diamond frets are the best :-)

Anonymous said...

i don't mind if it costs around the same, maybe a little more than metal frets. plus it'll look pretty sick on some fretboards.

Loki said...

@sub: My cousin said the exact same thing..

I think it would cost much more than the metal ones. The custom job for them would be quite costly already

subversion.sg said...

that's to be understood with a pinch of salt, of course...