Show Us Your Basses (Part 1)

Great deal on that BTB! What a cool project to clean it up and make nice again.

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Just went to get hardware for this BTB got to talking with the guy and he was ask me about the fingerboard led lights and he showed me this custom Warwick with gold hardware and gold frets. What what?

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Yeah not uncommon, a lot of the MIG’s do this. I think the frets are actually brass though.

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He told me it was gold as requested. I asked how much? Expecting to hear $7000-9000 he said about $15k shipped, yikes!

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Usually are bell brass but perhaps Warwick would fit gold as a special order?
I do know that they are pretty accommodating when it comes to customer service on their custom orders

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That would be really odd. Brass is a super soft metal.

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Sounds weird. Gold is butter-soft.

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They use Bell Bronze, stronger than brass. I’ve been gassing for a Streamer…

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Oops meant bronze not brass, sorry :rofl:

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I wonder if it was plated or solid. Gold frets would last approximately 20 minutes.

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They are plated

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gotta be

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Brass is soft, and if the frets are steel any gold plating would be rubbed off within days (hours??), would it not?

Then, there is something like this:

They make an alloy called EVO Gold, which apparently is a proprietary non-nickel alloy that’s harder than nickel alloys and softer than SS. My bet is that it’s a bronze, like a silicon bronze.

Sintoms makes a bronze fret wire that’s gold colored, and it’s supposed to have a Vickers hardness 170. That’s a definitecum grano salis, but there are options

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I looked into regretting with gold on the red and gold P. Thankfully I did not as it’s going for sale soon.

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:face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:
Yeah that’s the one :joy:

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And that gold plating would be toast tout de suite.

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Yeah. Hard to think of a worse metal for fretting (that isn’t somehow deadly, radioactive, or reactive, anyway). All gold has going for it is that it is relatively inert and looks nice.

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It could have been some kind of “golden” I was going to do that to one of my build but the economy of effort prevented me from doing, lol.

https://www.stewmac.com/luthier-tools-and-supplies/materials/fretwire/stewmac-gold-fretwire/

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Golden-colored is theoretically possible. Actual gold or gold-plated is doable…for a few nanoseconds. :crazy_face:

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Yeah, usually this is going to be bronze for the frets and brass for the bridge. Brass bridges are popular for some reason.

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