It's been a while. I hit a major money crunch, and I had to sell my 2007 mapleglo 360 3 years ago.
Other things in life came up, and getting a replacement Ric got put off. Well, things have settled down a bit financially, and I'm hankering for another Ric (perferably another 360, since that's what I've always had for Rickenbackers), but a little medical issue reared its ugly head up in 2014, that has added a complication to getting another Ric.In late winter/early spring of 2014, I ended up with a severe case of dermatitis, I wound up with a bit of an infection (fever), and ended up with major dermatitis breakouts on my arms, legs, and torso. Things got so bad, that I ended up having to get treatment from a dermatologist. During the treatment it was discovered (by doing a patch test [where they taped about 130 patches soaked in potential allergens to my back, let them soak for a few days, removed them, and checked for dermatitis where the patches were]), that I have a major allergy to chromium (which is a component of stainless steel), and a severe allergy to nickel. Considering that I've been playing guitar for 36 plus years, the nickel allergy came as an especially unpleasant surprise, since the vast majority of electric guitar strings are nickel. The remainder of most non-nickel electric guitar strings are are stainless steel. With that information in mind, it wasn't surprising, that out of the 200-300 different product lines electric guitar strings, I was only able to find TWO (which I confirmed via e-mail the the string manufacturers), that were free of both nickel, and stainless steel: Rotosound British Steels; and Ernie Ball Cobalts (which I have made my electric guitar string of choice, due to them being available in more gauges than Rotosounds), so I was luckily able to deal with the string issue.
There is another issue though - almost all guitars have nickel alloy frets. I discussed the fret concern with my dermatologist, and it was decided to adopt a wait and see approach with regards to them. The thought was that since the frets are touched much less often by your fingers than the strings, the dermatitis concerns might be greatly reduced. Unfortunately that turned out to not be the case - especially after I increased my playing time (both practicing and rehearsing), to play in the employee Christmas band, that plays at the company Christmas party. I started to get dermatitis breakouts on my skin again, so as much as I hated to do so, I was forced to get my guitars re-fretted with hypoallergenic fretwire (Jescar Evo Gold - it's free of both nickel, and chromium).
Guitars are expensive to get re-fretted (it's cost me anywhere from $250-$450 per guitar [it depends upon the guitar] to have the work done). I don't have the tools or expertise to do it myself, so I have to pay the cost. There is a bit of an issue with re-fretting - guitars that have finishes on their fingerboards, can be a bit of a hassle to re-fret, due to the fact that the finish alongside the frets needs to be removed, so fret removal tools can get a decent purchase on the frets. Unfortunately, removing the finish near the frets, usually causes some chipping in the finish (the luthier who has refretted my guitars, told me that this can be a significant concern with Rickenbackers due to them having a heavy clearcoat finish on the fingerboard). Finish can be re-applied to fix the chipping damage, after re-fretting, but I bet it doesn't match up that well with the rest of the (original) fingerboard finish.
My question is this - I get the impression the the W-series guitars, have little to no finish on the fingerboard. Is this the case? If it is, I can avoid most if not all of the re-fretting hassle that would exist with your typical rosewood fretboard 360 or 330.
