Fret

A bar of hard metal set into the fingerboard that the string is stopped against, dividing the scale into semitones.

Frets are usually made from a nickel-silver alloy or stainless steel, pressed or glued into slots, and their shape matters: a rounded crown makes clean contact with the string, while a flat top sounds dull and vague. Their spacing shortens progressively towards the body because each semitone is a fixed ratio of the remaining length. Worn, flattened frets cause buzzing and poor intonation, and stainless steel resists that wear far longer than nickel-silver.

Example: a barre chord works only because the frets lift the string clear of the wood so a single finger can stop several strings at once.

Fret

See also