Huge issue with defretting?!

[AkeJay02]

A friend of mine told me, after seeing a couple of my defretting jobs that I've done, that it is a really bad idea to do it. He said that he was talking to some pro guitarist that told him that the frets are in there for a reason, and that taking them out can cause harm to it. Is this true, or just some guy running his mouth off?

[bass&cookies]

The reason would be to correctly intonate every note for you. Maybe the guy's problem is he can't play fretless? The only harm I can see is if you screw the defret job up. I have never once heard of a problem caused simply because the frets were taken out.

I can see it now:
"OMG teh notes don't work right!"

[theosd]

Lol. Guitarists depend on frets in order to form chord shapes, otherwise they'd have to be 100% more accurate with their fingers... and they'd need to be skinny fingers!!

So yeh, the guitarist condition (of only knowing about their own instrument, and rarely if that) shines through here.

[Son of Magni]

Probably what he's talking about is that the fret tangs cause a little bit of backbow (helping the trussrod in effect). This means that when you do a de-fret you'll need to do a complete setup. Which of course you'll need to do anyways because you need to adjust the nut way down and the bridge and intonation. But usually you need to loosen the trussrod which is the only effect the frets have.

[AkeJay02]

Thanks, guys. I wasn't sure.