Mother of Pearl Inlays

[the other side]

Just curious of the larger MOP inlays wear. Such as on

200's, Birds etc. As the freatboard wears, has anyone

ever noticed any wear of MOP like the divots in the wooden part ? I guess this is a question for the long time owners of such. I haven't seen any wear on my Bird. Just a curiosity thread to all.

[62burst]

Nope, the MOP wears like iron. Don't recall seeing divots on old guitars with mother of pearl inlay, for that matter. If anything, the divots occur in the rosewood around the inlays.

 

Keeping the fretting hand's nails trimmed prevents the bulk of the wear. Maybe someone could post up a pic of some worn split parallelograms?

[slimt]

Yup.. you will wear out the frets, and fingerboard down to the truss rod before the inlays gives..

[mountainpicker]

I agree that mother-of-pearl wears like iron. They should make frets out of the stuff! It's like the joke about how the stuff they make the little black box that survives the airplane crash ought to be used to make the whole aircraft.

[Jayyj]

Les Paul Customs and ES355s do fine with the large MOP blocks - I don't really follow Les Pauls that closely but I've played a fair few 60s 355s over the years and never seen any wear to the blocks.

 

I also make guitars and when sanding MOP inlays on fingerboards I always use a hard block rather than cork because the inlays are so much harder than the surrounding wood.