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Appreciation for Fret Work

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darkbluemurder:
Since it has become increasingly difficult to take instruments to shops/luthiers to get work done I started doing more and more work myself whenever I get the chance. What I did during the course of the last few months was:

- fret leveling and crowning
- removing fret sprouts

Removing fret sprouts went surprisingly well. The neck no longer feels like a nailboard, and I completed the work in less than an hour. Certainly not professional quality but it worked.

The first guitar I leveled the frets on was my former no. 1 guitar I used with the last band I played in. For some reason it had a buzzy grating sound. I checked and found it had a slight rising tongue. I then marked the last six frets with a sharpie and filed them until the marks were gone. Then I repeated this with the last five frets, then the last four and so on. Then I recrowned and polished the frets. When I put on new strings and checked again the rise was gone, and the guitar plays a lot cleaner now. Again, certainly not professional quality but it works well now. The exercise was definitely worth it but the work was harder and more time consuming than I thought it would be. Kudos to all techs who do a good job on such things and are willing to do it.

I repeated the process on another guitar which improved as well but not to the same degree as the first one. I may need to redo that one some time in the future.

Cheers Stephan

Guitar74:
I couldn't agree more. Fret leveling, recrowning, and just replacing them, at least to me, is a daunting task that I am neither patient enough for, nor good enough at to even begin to attempt it on any of my axes. I see why a re-fret job is so expensive compared to getting a new neck. It's work, skilled work, that justifies a premium price.

buddroyce:
I love that you've decided to do your own fret work. It's definitely a tedious and time consuming job. What did you buff your frets up to?

I gotta admit though, after doing so many fret jobs over the years, I'd much rather just get someone else to do it for my guitars now.

darkbluemurder:
I used 1500 or 2000 grit sandpaper to do the buff. I think somewhere in the back of the large cupboard is still some 0000 steel wool left which would probably have done it even better. No problem though as I have to redo it anyway on the last guitar I did. With that I progressively lowered the last 8 frets but while it improved a bit the improvement was not enough. I will do the last 6 frets again on that one.

Cheers Stephan

buddroyce:
You mean you sanded/filed down the last 8 frets more than the rest?

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