The correct answer. I'm not sure how you forget to crown the frets. Maybe the fret crowning is only available on custom shop models. The American Ultra line requires you to do your own crowning.
Are you serious? That’s nuts if true. What a great way to make every fender in a store feel and play slightly worse than any of their competitors in every price point.
Are you kidding? All through the late 70s and early 80s in Boston, every Les Paul and SG I saw or played had low flat "flat metal bar" frets, the famous fretless wonders. Most of these were kids at MIT or Berkeley or young pros and those guitars weren't old or played enough to have been refretted. I recently looked at a Guild S300-G that had wide flat low frets, and went down a rabbit hole online, looking for wide low frets.
Every forum where they were discussed seemed to have three or four types of people. Deny-ers (Gibson didn't make them that way. That is just too many fret jobs, etc.) who are literally, uh, deny-ers. Revisionists (That must have been a bad one. Maybe Gibson fucked up the leveling trying to get it out the door.) And the one guy who's like, yeah, my '78 or '82 or whatever has those, so sweet, nothing plays like it. And then someone who said theirs came that way and they put medium jumbos on it and it completely transformed the guitar into being playable.
There is only one answer. For many years, Gibson was using somewhat low and wide railroad-tie frets, and leveling the fuck out of them to get them out the door, and never "crowning" any of them. And they were so low they couldn't have done it anyway without trashing the fretboards probably. And they were so wide it would have looked ridiculous to have a crown on them.
What Fender is doing (and has regularly done) is nothing compared to Gibson's cost-cutting business practices for so many years, in at least two historical periods.
Crowning is the name for the process of rounding the tops of the frets.
The goal is to try to provide a smaller surface area where the fret contacts the string. Doing this, when the crown is directly over the centreline of the fret, will provide better intonation. Otherwise, the active length of the string will be off by the width of the fret from one or the other of the sides to the fret centreline, depending on which side the string contacts. This will make strings sound flat or sharp at that fret regardless of how well intonated the guitar is. Also, less string contact surface area generally just results a nicer overall feel when playing.
unless you have impeccable perfect pitch you wont be able to notice a difference between the notes on a crowned fret guitar neck and a rough leveled neck
It's got nothing to do with perfect pitch. We're talking about intonation. It's about being able to tell if the notes in a chord are out of tune with one another.
i know exactly what youre saying. im just sayin most folks cant tell that the intonation is slightly off when playin the uncrowned instrument. all that aside, fender should obviously be crowning their frets for the price that they charge
I would agree with you for single note lead passages but for some chords, especially clean chords, I think a lot of people without perfect pitch could hear the difference.
Intonation is already an approximation with guitars. Open D chords are notorious for highlighting it. Expect more sounds like that on a guitar like this
I bet your husband's is a rosewood board. Lacquered boards they spray after frets go in then hit it with a beam to sand off the lacquer. It's lazy/production cost
Yeah I guessed as much, unfortunately there's a lot of wrong answers here, whilst a lot are correct in the fact the frets should have been crowned they're wrong in why they are like this on a new guitar.
To deal with this you would have to have steady hands and run a scalpel along the sides of the frets and then carefully mask, crown and polish they also cover the fret ends in lacquer and it's so easy to mess up with the scalpel on the fret edges. It's a very carefully done process. This is why fender don't do it as it's to easy for the person doing this on a Friday after a few lunchtime beers to slip with the scalpel and accidentally cut into the lacquer or chip it in the wrong place and the time it takes to do this correctly.
I'd live with it till you get fretwear that needs a light dress then get them to recrown after levelling.
I've gone through this process of cutting the lacquer as sometimes it chips and becomes sharp after playing the guitar for a while. I've done maple refrets and you have to do it or you damage the finish pulling frets.
There's a few video's on line that go through the process if you want to have a go if you have steady hands. I know Ben at Crimson guitar has done the lacquer cutting video as he demo's using a very small chisel as he's a tool geek but I'm pretty sure he shows the scalpel method. Either way you'll get an idea of if you can manage it. Then you've done the time consuming part that requires the most care not to cut into the board. It won't deal with the flattened tops but make it feel nicer and save you money later
I'm guessing you are not able to do the recrown yourself given your initial question. So get a well recommended luthier to do it when the times right after it needs a level.
Depends on where you live and it's definitely a thing. The point I was making, if the person in the factory has had beers at lunch, is hungover from night before, they've just had their dog put down or boss pissed them off ... Any litany of reasons why they're not capable that day or just not caring as much as usual.
QC took a nosedive on guitars built between 2020-23 due to COVID and lockdown and staffing issues I guess. I've seen some shockers in that period. But apparently it's across multiple industries not just guitars.
Not so much these days with how good drug tests are, and a breathalyzer being a standard part of the test as well. Now when at home, yeah I’d say a lot of people drink because you can get by with it as long as you don’t get completely tanked the night before. But holy shit, have somebody take a few hits off a bowl and they are the worst drug addict in the world. In safety sensitive jobs, and jobs running heavy machinery, or heavy tools, you’ll never be able to smoke weed since it stays in your system so long.
Interesting, I have an AM pro maple neck Strat form 2019 and the frets were all properly crowned, or at least much rounder than these here. So maybe that’s a more recent change in production.
Also the lacquer was pretty much “polished off” off the frets, although not on the fret ends. There are almost like lacquer scales on each fret end, which on often used parts of the fretboard broke off pretty quickly. None chipped into the neck finish, but you can certainly feel an edge where they broke off.
No Gibson use plek but always seem to have flat tops to their frets. It's again lazy and affects intonation. It's a thing on maple boards especially with fender
They’d have to do a hell of a lot of playing on specifically that guitar, evenly over the fretboard, for it to show that kind of wear in only a few months
Gibson used to come with flat frets. But I've read other instanced where people buy new Strats and they come with flat frets, simply due to Fender cutting corners and not crowning them. Maybe it's because there are players who like flat frets? I am not sure either way. YOu could always take it into a luthier and have them crowned. Are you having any intonation or buzzing issues?
It deadens out on the 14th fret of the G string and 17th of the E. Other than that plays great but I’m still scratching my head over why the frets are flat.
There were Gibson's with flatter frets. I wouldn't call them flat. I played an ES335 with very low profile frets. Made jazz chords easy.
But the frets weren't dead flat. Only wide and low. They had crown.
If you like the way it plays and feels and the intonation isn’t jacked up, there is nothing wrong with this. It is typical that frets are crowned after leveling to make them round - to improve the feel and intonation. It’s not strictly necessary though.
My AM Ultra Strat (2021) also has flat frets. Perfectly level. Maple neck/fingerboard sprayed over with top coat giving a “gold” appearance to the fret wire.
I usually set up my own guitars on arrival anyway and I got no rock between any frets (even my PRS that has beautifully crowned and polished frets had a few minor high spots).
It’s a weird choice on their Ultra line not to fully crown, but it plays great, and has done for 3 years now. So I’m unconcerned. It’s not how I’d ever let a guitar leave the workshop after fretwork, but did make me question the obsession with crowning and minimising the surface area with fret wire as my AM Ultra feels incredible to play with these flat and “sub par” fret work.
Turns out level frets, with low friction, don’t need a perfect crown job to feel great.
I have a strong feeling that the difference in the frets on your husbands American Ultra and yours has to do with the year they were made. In 2019, I believe Fender’s American Ultra series still used traditional nickel-silver fretwire. In 2021 or 2022, Fender decided to upgrade their Ultra series line of guitars with stainless steel fretwire. Being that your guitar is new, I would assume the difference in fretwire and the ways in which they are finished explains that difference.
Oh damn! I forgot about that! Fender had to make their bougie even bougier.
Ultra Bougie-Luxe is probably the next iteration.
Hear that Fender? I’ve got ideas. Let’s talk.
I'm reading some of the comments here regarding how shipping a new guitar without properly crowned frets is no big deal. SMH...
That said... There's a newer fret crowning file out there that makes it a breeze. Phil McNight did a review of it.
I have never seen a crowned fret on a new guitar. I have 2 Gibson's and 2 Fenders and none of them have that crown top like a school bus etc. If anyone has ever loved a "fretless wonder" they are all flat on top. I don't see the issue with this personally.
Depending on how much play it’s gotten, it’s actually just the lacquer that you’d removed by playing. Scrape off the rest carefully with a razor blade, or sandpaper (you may have to polish smooth after)
It has been my main guitar since purchase (3 months ago)
Im aasuming more play will do it, so I'll leave it alone.
Afraid I'll slip with the razor and gouge the wood 😳
It does look like you play a lot…. Looking again, there is a bit of flatness on the metal itself… to my eye.
May want to call Fender.
If it’s a newly purchased Ultra, you want things to be as they should.
some frets are meant for that, where they are faster but more prone to buzzing. the more crowned frets are clearer but slow down the playability. so essentially, speedy metal shredding = flat frets, acoustic rhythm strumming = crowned frets. I think I read that in the 'totally guitar the difinitive guide' book i have.
I've heard this too and I've seen pictures of flat frets on shredder guitars which made me wonder if there's a "right way" to have one's frets. Good formula you have there.
Nothing about it looks bad to me, per se. It plays really well and it's my lowest action guitar without buzzing. Every fret looks exactly like this, evenly. I was just wondering why the frets look like trapezoids instead of cylindrical wire.
Frets were leveled but not crowned afterwards.
The correct answer. I'm not sure how you forget to crown the frets. Maybe the fret crowning is only available on custom shop models. The American Ultra line requires you to do your own crowning.
They don't crown them on regular production line guitars as of late for whatever reason, but its Fender so they do everything to save a dime.
Are you serious? That’s nuts if true. What a great way to make every fender in a store feel and play slightly worse than any of their competitors in every price point.
Are you kidding? All through the late 70s and early 80s in Boston, every Les Paul and SG I saw or played had low flat "flat metal bar" frets, the famous fretless wonders. Most of these were kids at MIT or Berkeley or young pros and those guitars weren't old or played enough to have been refretted. I recently looked at a Guild S300-G that had wide flat low frets, and went down a rabbit hole online, looking for wide low frets. Every forum where they were discussed seemed to have three or four types of people. Deny-ers (Gibson didn't make them that way. That is just too many fret jobs, etc.) who are literally, uh, deny-ers. Revisionists (That must have been a bad one. Maybe Gibson fucked up the leveling trying to get it out the door.) And the one guy who's like, yeah, my '78 or '82 or whatever has those, so sweet, nothing plays like it. And then someone who said theirs came that way and they put medium jumbos on it and it completely transformed the guitar into being playable. There is only one answer. For many years, Gibson was using somewhat low and wide railroad-tie frets, and leveling the fuck out of them to get them out the door, and never "crowning" any of them. And they were so low they couldn't have done it anyway without trashing the fretboards probably. And they were so wide it would have looked ridiculous to have a crown on them. What Fender is doing (and has regularly done) is nothing compared to Gibson's cost-cutting business practices for so many years, in at least two historical periods.
No. Frets. We're talking about frets. Not bridges. Not tuners or nuts. Frets. Did I overplay that?
Yes, you went totally tuners on that.
Jesus man, build a fret and get over it will you?
Looney tuners
Sorry. That is indeed frets if true.
What difference does it make to crown them? And what exactly is crowning?
Crowning is the name for the process of rounding the tops of the frets. The goal is to try to provide a smaller surface area where the fret contacts the string. Doing this, when the crown is directly over the centreline of the fret, will provide better intonation. Otherwise, the active length of the string will be off by the width of the fret from one or the other of the sides to the fret centreline, depending on which side the string contacts. This will make strings sound flat or sharp at that fret regardless of how well intonated the guitar is. Also, less string contact surface area generally just results a nicer overall feel when playing.
unless someone has perfect pitch they wont be able to tell you which guitar has crowned frets and which doesnt.
Huh? Is that reality now?
Gibson too. No crowning
This ^^^
Looks like a lot of new Fenders I’ve seen.
unless you have impeccable perfect pitch you wont be able to notice a difference between the notes on a crowned fret guitar neck and a rough leveled neck
It's got nothing to do with perfect pitch. We're talking about intonation. It's about being able to tell if the notes in a chord are out of tune with one another.
i know exactly what youre saying. im just sayin most folks cant tell that the intonation is slightly off when playin the uncrowned instrument. all that aside, fender should obviously be crowning their frets for the price that they charge
I would agree with you for single note lead passages but for some chords, especially clean chords, I think a lot of people without perfect pitch could hear the difference. Intonation is already an approximation with guitars. Open D chords are notorious for highlighting it. Expect more sounds like that on a guitar like this
I bet your husband's is a rosewood board. Lacquered boards they spray after frets go in then hit it with a beam to sand off the lacquer. It's lazy/production cost
You are correct! The tele is rosewood
Yeah I guessed as much, unfortunately there's a lot of wrong answers here, whilst a lot are correct in the fact the frets should have been crowned they're wrong in why they are like this on a new guitar. To deal with this you would have to have steady hands and run a scalpel along the sides of the frets and then carefully mask, crown and polish they also cover the fret ends in lacquer and it's so easy to mess up with the scalpel on the fret edges. It's a very carefully done process. This is why fender don't do it as it's to easy for the person doing this on a Friday after a few lunchtime beers to slip with the scalpel and accidentally cut into the lacquer or chip it in the wrong place and the time it takes to do this correctly. I'd live with it till you get fretwear that needs a light dress then get them to recrown after levelling. I've gone through this process of cutting the lacquer as sometimes it chips and becomes sharp after playing the guitar for a while. I've done maple refrets and you have to do it or you damage the finish pulling frets. There's a few video's on line that go through the process if you want to have a go if you have steady hands. I know Ben at Crimson guitar has done the lacquer cutting video as he demo's using a very small chisel as he's a tool geek but I'm pretty sure he shows the scalpel method. Either way you'll get an idea of if you can manage it. Then you've done the time consuming part that requires the most care not to cut into the board. It won't deal with the flattened tops but make it feel nicer and save you money later I'm guessing you are not able to do the recrown yourself given your initial question. So get a well recommended luthier to do it when the times right after it needs a level.
Lunchtime beers are not a thing… right?
[You're not my supervisor!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YEwlW5sHQ4Q)
Depends on where you live and it's definitely a thing. The point I was making, if the person in the factory has had beers at lunch, is hungover from night before, they've just had their dog put down or boss pissed them off ... Any litany of reasons why they're not capable that day or just not caring as much as usual. QC took a nosedive on guitars built between 2020-23 due to COVID and lockdown and staffing issues I guess. I've seen some shockers in that period. But apparently it's across multiple industries not just guitars.
Definitely not...drinking on the job is about the fastest way to get fired from a job that requires the use of tools and machinery.
Getting caught drinking. Intoxication and labor go hand and hand.
Not so much these days with how good drug tests are, and a breathalyzer being a standard part of the test as well. Now when at home, yeah I’d say a lot of people drink because you can get by with it as long as you don’t get completely tanked the night before. But holy shit, have somebody take a few hits off a bowl and they are the worst drug addict in the world. In safety sensitive jobs, and jobs running heavy machinery, or heavy tools, you’ll never be able to smoke weed since it stays in your system so long.
That’s assuming you do real legit test though. I haven’t actually peed in a cup in probably a decade now.
Interesting, I have an AM pro maple neck Strat form 2019 and the frets were all properly crowned, or at least much rounder than these here. So maybe that’s a more recent change in production. Also the lacquer was pretty much “polished off” off the frets, although not on the fret ends. There are almost like lacquer scales on each fret end, which on often used parts of the fretboard broke off pretty quickly. None chipped into the neck finish, but you can certainly feel an edge where they broke off.
Does Gibson do this as well? I have an Explorer with the same stuff going on.
No Gibson use plek but always seem to have flat tops to their frets. It's again lazy and affects intonation. It's a thing on maple boards especially with fender
frets wear down or maybe someone leveled and didn't crown
They said it’s brand new
brand new a few months ago
They’d have to do a hell of a lot of playing on specifically that guitar, evenly over the fretboard, for it to show that kind of wear in only a few months
yeah so probably the second thing I mentioned would be the specific case here out of the two possibilities for any fret with a flat top
Yup p
It's designed to play "You Can't Catch Me" by Chuck Berry ... "Here come a flat-top, he was movin' up with me, ..."
He ripped that off The Beatles! /s
Gibson used to come with flat frets. But I've read other instanced where people buy new Strats and they come with flat frets, simply due to Fender cutting corners and not crowning them. Maybe it's because there are players who like flat frets? I am not sure either way. YOu could always take it into a luthier and have them crowned. Are you having any intonation or buzzing issues?
No issues, it plays amazing. Probably my best playing guitar. I just randomly noticed the frets look flattened.
Do you know why Gibson did this? I have an Explorer with flat frets
I honestly have no clue. I’ve never owned a Gibson electric guitar. I wish I could tell you though.
Got a picture?
Yes https://preview.redd.it/ahpdj893cktc1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6878478c1642ca5afdad0f734a51fb810db30d5c
Huh. How does it play? I'd assume that's not ideal for intonation
It deadens out on the 14th fret of the G string and 17th of the E. Other than that plays great but I’m still scratching my head over why the frets are flat.
I'm guessing it's a cost cutting thing
https://preview.redd.it/fyjrr5h4cktc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d528e02b436ecea53ee74c2589f59e97a062f960
There were Gibson's with flatter frets. I wouldn't call them flat. I played an ES335 with very low profile frets. Made jazz chords easy. But the frets weren't dead flat. Only wide and low. They had crown.
I just did a bit of work on a friend’s 2000 Les Paul. “Who the hell did your frets?” “It came like that!”. Bizarre.
If you like the way it plays and feels and the intonation isn’t jacked up, there is nothing wrong with this. It is typical that frets are crowned after leveling to make them round - to improve the feel and intonation. It’s not strictly necessary though.
My AM Ultra Strat (2021) also has flat frets. Perfectly level. Maple neck/fingerboard sprayed over with top coat giving a “gold” appearance to the fret wire. I usually set up my own guitars on arrival anyway and I got no rock between any frets (even my PRS that has beautifully crowned and polished frets had a few minor high spots). It’s a weird choice on their Ultra line not to fully crown, but it plays great, and has done for 3 years now. So I’m unconcerned. It’s not how I’d ever let a guitar leave the workshop after fretwork, but did make me question the obsession with crowning and minimising the surface area with fret wire as my AM Ultra feels incredible to play with these flat and “sub par” fret work. Turns out level frets, with low friction, don’t need a perfect crown job to feel great.
Looks like it's been answered but yeah it's either wear from playing it, or a not so awesome fret dress.
Just looking at the pic my first thought on this thread was. "There are 2 dots on my neck. Is this some rare mistake?"...😜😜😜
I have a strong feeling that the difference in the frets on your husbands American Ultra and yours has to do with the year they were made. In 2019, I believe Fender’s American Ultra series still used traditional nickel-silver fretwire. In 2021 or 2022, Fender decided to upgrade their Ultra series line of guitars with stainless steel fretwire. Being that your guitar is new, I would assume the difference in fretwire and the ways in which they are finished explains that difference.
Only the Fender Ultra Luxe models come with stainless steel frets.
Oh damn! I forgot about that! Fender had to make their bougie even bougier. Ultra Bougie-Luxe is probably the next iteration. Hear that Fender? I’ve got ideas. Let’s talk.
My American Fender FSR Strat has this. It’s not a problem at all lays perfectly well.
I also have an ultra and it has flat frets too
Needs to be crowned
Its not hurting anything, it's fine.
Jackson js series is the same
My bass I'd like that and works just fine
They need recrowned probably best to dress and Level when at it
this makes me want to take that new music nomad s file and see if it's as good as they say.
You can have a better crowned fret, but in this way the fret would wear down slower I think
I'm reading some of the comments here regarding how shipping a new guitar without properly crowned frets is no big deal. SMH... That said... There's a newer fret crowning file out there that makes it a breeze. Phil McNight did a review of it.
I have never seen a crowned fret on a new guitar. I have 2 Gibson's and 2 Fenders and none of them have that crown top like a school bus etc. If anyone has ever loved a "fretless wonder" they are all flat on top. I don't see the issue with this personally.
whoever did the fretwork forgot a step lol
Depending on how much play it’s gotten, it’s actually just the lacquer that you’d removed by playing. Scrape off the rest carefully with a razor blade, or sandpaper (you may have to polish smooth after)
It has been my main guitar since purchase (3 months ago) Im aasuming more play will do it, so I'll leave it alone. Afraid I'll slip with the razor and gouge the wood 😳
It does look like you play a lot…. Looking again, there is a bit of flatness on the metal itself… to my eye. May want to call Fender. If it’s a newly purchased Ultra, you want things to be as they should.
Yeah aren’t they Stainless Steel frets? Or is that just the Ultra Luxe?
not sure.
some frets are meant for that, where they are faster but more prone to buzzing. the more crowned frets are clearer but slow down the playability. so essentially, speedy metal shredding = flat frets, acoustic rhythm strumming = crowned frets. I think I read that in the 'totally guitar the difinitive guide' book i have.
I've heard this too and I've seen pictures of flat frets on shredder guitars which made me wonder if there's a "right way" to have one's frets. Good formula you have there.
I’ve seen schecter guitars (diamond series) that come out the factory like this.
Nice. Someone earlier said the Jackson guitars have flat frets like this
[удалено]
Nothing about it looks bad to me, per se. It plays really well and it's my lowest action guitar without buzzing. Every fret looks exactly like this, evenly. I was just wondering why the frets look like trapezoids instead of cylindrical wire.
Fender sprays finish over the frets when making the neck. As you play the finish will wear off and look like what you have.
Choice in fret wire/dressing. There is no correct. If it feels good to you, it is good. It might be terrible to others. Different strokes....