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How do I know if my guitar needs a refret?

You almost certainly don't need one. This is a job I do maybe once a month, and that might be generous. Every player who walks in convinced their guitar needs a refret is, more often than not, wrong — but let's actually talk about the cases where they're right, because there are real ones, and they're more interesting than "the frets got old."

What frets are actually made of

Most frets are nickel-silver — which, despite the name, contains zero silver. It's a copper-nickel-zinc alloy chosen because it's workable, looks good, and is cheap enough to stock by the mile. It's also relatively soft, which is exactly why it wears. Stainless steel frets exist as the harder alternative — they resist wear dramatically better, last years longer under the same playing hours, and are (not coincidentally) a genuine pain in my hands to crown and dress because that same hardness fights back against every file and stone I own. You pay for that longevity somewhere, and it's in labor.

So, like no mystery here about wear. Every time you fret a note, you're pressing a string down onto metal and then sliding, bending, and vibrating against it — thousands of times a week, every week, for years. Friction wins. It's not a defect, it's not bad luck, it's just physics grinding a groove into your favorite chord shapes while you're busy actually enjoying the guitar. (For the full breakdown of why this happens, see Fret Wear • Why do frets wear out?.)

In my opinion, this is a feature – not a bug. I don’t like that glassy fret feel of S/S frets. I want some friction. I want to feel a little resistance. I want a little grind when I bend. Not because I like the fight, but because I want tactile response. I’m a blues player, and I like to shave a little meat off the fret with every wail. Just one man’s opinion. I digress.

The number that actually matters: about .030"

A new fret typically starts around .043–.048" tall, depending on the wire profile. That height is not just cosmetic — it's your safety margin. Every leveling job shaves a little off the top to restore a flat plane, which means every level also eats into that margin permanently.

Once a fret's average height gets down into the .030" range, you're at the point where there isn't enough metal left to level and crown again without leaving the frets dangerously thin, prone to premature wear, or at risk of the crown disappearing entirely under a hard-pressing left hand. That number is the real decision point — not how many years it's been, not how the frets look under bad shop lighting, but an actual measurement against actual remaining material.

The real issue: you can't crown a pancake

Here's the part people don't intuitively grasp. Crowning is carving a rounded peak back onto a fret that's been flattened by leveling or wear. Why is this good? Couple reasons.

1. Your intonation is based on scale length. When you fret a string, that length is measure from the break point of the fret to the break point on the saddle. If the fret is not crowned, that break point is not perfectly centered – i.e. a little sharp or flat.
2. A flat fret has surface area that can cause buzz, muted notes on high bends, and other artifacts that are bad for your tone.

Crowning only works if there's still enough metal there to carve a peak out of. Once a fret has been leveled down to a wide, flat plateau with nothing left above the .030" mark, there's no dome left to sculpt — you're trying to shape a pancake back into a dome, and pancakes don't have a dome hiding inside them.

At that point, no amount of skill or patience turns flat metal into round metal. That's not a leveling problem anymore. That's a "there is no more fret here" problem, and the only honest fix is pulling it and starting over. Generally this is decades, not years.

The other real reason: they were never installed right

Wear isn't the only path to a refret — bad installation is the other one, and it doesn't care how old the guitar is. I had a customer's guitar on the bench recently where I started a routine level and found that 14 of the 22 frets weren't seated properly to begin with. They were lifting on both ends, and they popped straight out with zero heat and zero effort — which tells you everything about how little they were actually glued or seated in the first place.

The remaining 8 were, ironically, stubborn to get out, which is its own tell that the install was inconsistent fret to fret, not just uniformly bad. When frets are lifting, rocking, or popping out on their own, that's not something a level and a polish will fix. That's a full refret, full stop, regardless of how much height is left on the frets themselves.

Good fret installs feel permanent. Every once and a while you can bang a fret back into the wood and glue it down. That’s a lucky break, not a gold standard technique.

Signs pointing toward "maybe just a level"

Mild to moderate wear, buzzing concentrated in a few specific spots, and frets that still measure comfortably above that .030" floor. A level shaves a small, even amount of material across all frets to restore a flat, consistent plane — and it works as long as there's enough fret left to work with afterward.

Signs pointing toward "you probably need a refret"

• Frets worn down to flat spots or grooves you can actually feel with a fingernail
• Measured fret height already down near or below .030", or a level's already been done once or twice with little height to spare
• Frets that are loose, lifting, rocking, or visibly pulling away from the fretboard — a sign of wear, a bad original install, or both
• You want to change fret size or material (like upgrading to stainless steel) instead of just restoring what's already there

Why this decision matters

A level is a relatively quick, inexpensive service. A refret is a bigger job — pulling old frets, prepping the board, installing and dressing new ones — and the bill reflects that. If you're not sure which camp your guitar's in, that's a five-minute visual and measurement check, not a guessing game you need to lose money on.

Book Now for a free evaluation — five minutes on the bench settles it.