I like the vintage style skinny frets. My DJ5 Lakland especially feels very nice. I only have 2 basses with jumbo frets and even if I don't actually hate them, I find I am playing those basses less.
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Tiny frets; easier or harder to play on?my n
- Thread starter Fender_Bender
- Start date
my fat fingers would never be able to detect any difference on something that varies by 10,000's of an inch
In general my response would fall in the ”just different” category but coming from playing a fretless the majority of our set, it is an easier transistion for a fretted bass choice. I find I have been gravitating towards vintage lower profile frets more and more while jumbos feel awkward and weird. I would think it is a matter more related to what one is used to.
LOVE the little frets. Easy to play, gets the action nice, and gets a nice woody tone. What’s not to love?
With regular sized frets, the strings almost never touch the wood, even out at the first few positions where you'd think the string would touch the fingerboard. You'd have to be using very light gauge strings and have a very hard left hand technique. If the frets have been worked over a few times, are worn down in spots, or are the lower type then you'd see it more often - like on an older bass where you see marks from a set of rounds in the wood - but go look at a newish bass and you're unlikely to find string marks on the fingerboard. Most people who put those block decals on never wear them out.
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In retrospect it may be the string spacing that has been requiring the most adjustment for me. I thought the Fender standard at the bridge was 3/4” spacing, but this is definitely wider.
I’m pretty easy on frets but I do believe I will go to a smoother string in order to get more life from these frets. I’ll probably try swapping my TI flats from my other precision. I doubt that these could be recrowned more than once.
I prefer vintage frets. They feel big compared to my fretless.
Small frets, or no frets, for me. According to Lee, there's a semi-fretless sound you can get from those tiny frets, which stands out in a lot of his recordings. My Harmony bass has the tiny frets, and prefer the feel of that compared to the large frets on the Ibanez. Not enough to refret it though.
Different. Any normally-functioning instrument that demands more attention from the player for proper execution and technique is almost always a plus in the long run.
Yeah, me too... I don't mind bigger frets, and have actually replaced smaller frets (on a Rick 330 guitar - stupid small, and very soft) with larger, harder ones; and built my Warmoth Mini-P with Medium Jumbo stainless ones. But, I learned to play bass on a friend's new-at the-time '69 Rick 4001, so I'm always drawn to a "vintage" bass with smallish frets. As for the rest of my basses? I just play them; the frets are what they are...
I don't like them. Fender went to "vintage narrow tall" frets with the AmPro, et al, and I sold mine after getting uncontrollable fret rattle despite a tuneup. I came away realizing there was a reason the manufacturers went with medium jumbo as standard frets: they're more comfortable and work better.
