Which is it?

[Mr. Mig]

I am having a debate with a friend of mine about fretwear. What contributes most to it? The material(Steel, Nickel, Chrome), or the type(Flatwound or Roundwound)? I think it is the style. I think round does more damage. I know this has probably been asked, but I gotta know what you guys think.

[fretlessman71]

Rounds are harder on frets than flats.

Steel strings are harder on frets than nickel.

"Chrome" isn't really a string material; it's a brand name of the D'Addario flatwound bass strings.

Playing thumb-pop style will be harder on your frets than playing country gigs.

In short, anything that deals with metal vs. metal is going to cause SOME wear; the harder one of the metals is, the more the other will wear out. Simple physics.

[JTE]

It's a combination of a lot of factors, and therefore impossible to make accurate sweeping generalizations about which causes the most wear.

Round vs. flat, steel vs. nickle, fret material, your fretting hand technique, how hard you move the strings, all come into play. But even more, within those areas you have a lot of variance. For example, Rotosound RS-66L reputation for chewing up frets is due to the coarse wrap wire they use and the different alloy they use compared to most other stainless steel rounds. In that case it's less them being stainless rounds than it is that they're rather coarse and hard stainless rounds. It's why they sound like they do too. But compared to other stainless rounds, they are more abrasive.

If you play with left-hand vibrato, it's going to wear the frets faster than a precise and light touch with the left hand, regardless of whether you're using stainless rounds or nickle flats.

jte