Observation: Your thoughts welcome

I have noted some wear, albeit slight,  on the frets under the melody strings of a dulcimer from a well known American builder. I play with a noter and have been using a bamboo (which has a high silica content in the outermost layers of fibers) noter for about two years now.

My thoughts are that a noter is much less expensive than frets to replace so perhaps I need to consider using a noter of softer wood wearing it away rather than the frets.

Any thoughts?