I have an ESP E-II M-I that I bought in March of 2025. Initially, the frets were dead on and everything played really smoothly. A year later, I've got uneven frets all over the board from fret 13 and higher. I'm wondering if shifts in humidity/seasonal changes/environmental changes combined with it being a new guitar have resulted in some frets becoming a little unseated. These are stainless steel frets and they came leveled, nicely crowned, and very polished. When I first got the guitar I could drop the action to 1mm on the bass side and .75mm on the treble side without a problem. Now I'm having to keep it at 1.25mm on the bass side and 1.00mm on the treble side to avoid horrid buzz on the D and G strings on the 12th fret and above. I get this isn't a horrible situation to be in, but this is a pretty expensive guitar and dealing with stainless frets is a bit more expensive than nickel. So I was wondering if any of you had this experience, and if so, what you did to fix it. My first thought is brass fret hammer and see if I can pop them back down. And if that doesn't work just bite the bullet and take them to get leveled.
Thank you all in advance.
Thank you all in advance.
