I have been playing a blues song that has a lot of bends at the 10th fret with the high E string. It's a fast tune that is taking time to master. I have noticed alarming fret wear on the 9th and 10th fret attributable to nothing other than practicing this one song. The other frets are rounded and dull. The 9th and 10th fret are shiny and flattened.

Is this normal wear for bend-intensive playing?

The frets are still very usable, I was just surprised to see any wear at all in such a short period of time.

You're pretty much just polishing the frets. They are wearing, but not as much as you think.

Its probably not worn as much as you think. My Tele fell over once and the string put what felt and looked like a deep groove in one fret. I thought the fret would need replacement, but my luthier leveled it out in no time and it looks an plays perfectly.

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RudyH, a pic, possible to see or notice the differeence? My Bros son is a bass guitarist in a heavy metal band and he has been letting me use one of his basses as a backup until I can fix mine, it seems like frets 1,2and 3 have a little extra wear, and in our drummers old Ozzie tribute band that guitarist' entire fretboard looks as if it had been worn down a bit.

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It happens... I shifted my default noodling from A up three frets to C because my frets are starting to develop sharp edges after a year's steady playing. I have a habit of just hammering blues progressions whenever I'm not playing a specific piece. I should probably do something about that, but life is short and there's plenty of blues that needs seeing to.

My friend Mike who has lived his life inside his family guitar store-literally swears they do not use as good a grade of fret wire as they used to. I am extremely hard on my frets when it comes to bending and all it takes me is two good years to need a grind and polish on a new guitar.

My guitar will have big gouges and grooves cut into the frets no matter what I do. All I can say is make sure when you wipe your strings down you clean the under side of them. I do this by pinching the string with a polishing cloth in between my thumb and index finger after slacking off on the tuning and riding the string up to the nut then down to the end of the fret board until no more dirt shows.

By not cleaning under your strings the build up will get quite hard and cause a lot of damage to your frets.