Pre-Radiused Fretwire

I roll my own with a modified Waverly fret wire roller. I normally roll it to about an inch less radius than the fingerboard it's going in to. It isn't critical. You just want it to be a little smaller radius. The 9.5" should be fine. The 7.25 will work too; you can easily unbend it by hand back to around 9" R.

 

I made a roller out of some washers, 2 bearings, a few bolts and some threaded rod. Cost less than $10 to build. Works great. Build you're own.

 

I'll try and find a pic for you. It's beyond easy.

 

I'm still trying to figure out why this is an issue. I buy fretwire and it arrives in a large coil. The radius of that coil is smaller than the radius of my fretboard. I cut off what I need, hammer it in, and it stays. Done.

What am I missing?

 

Yeah, I agree. I get my fretwire from Jescar, and it normally comes through rolled to about 6" radius, which works fine for most of my basses, which are 7 1/4" radius fingerboards. But I do some 4" radius fingerboards. For them I roll the wire down to about 3 1/2" R. When I occasionally do something flatter, like 12" or 16", I'll "deradius" a length by hand to roughly 10" R. The amount of overbend isn't a critical thing.

 

Here is a bending jig I made a while ago:



Some small pieces of metal, some ball bearings and some screws is all you need. Note that the brass piece have a small slot filed into it for the fret tang to fit into so that the tang isn't damaged. A set of ball bearings would probably work better, though.

 

The wire Warmoth sells is already bent to the radius you need.

 

This is a quick&dirty one I made a few weeks ago.

Just piece of Plexiglas with three brass rollers attached to it, in the rollers I cut a groove for the fret tang.


The roller with the handle on it is adjustable from the back (the roller itself is not present in this picture).