Tools for fretwork?

[nightsprinter]

Basically normal filing position directly over the fret. just position the fretboard/neck in the necessary angle so that when you move your hand back and forth, its in the straightest position.

Ohhhhh okay lmao man I was doing some mental gymnastics in my head. Basically use the file normally and be careful. Copy.

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

This turned out really well. I didn't want to level the frets on my best guitars initially but now I almost feel like they're a step behind the ones I've leveled.

I've spent a lot of money on tools and pickups the last months. But the fret stuff was only around 320€. And if I level my best guitars too that'll be 5 guitars that I've done a full fretboard level on.
Definitely a very good investment that I should have done a lot sooner

A professional luthier around here would charge around 200€ for every full fretboard level, from what I've read on some forum...so yeah. Pretty crazy...

 

[nightsprinter]

This turned out really well. I didn't want to level the frets on my best guitars initially but now I almost feel like they're a step behind the ones I've leveled.

I've spent a lot of money on tools and pickups the last months. But the fret stuff was only around 320€. And if I level my best guitars too that'll be 5 guitars that I've done a full fretboard level on.
Definitely a very good investment that I should have done a lot sooner

A professional luthier around here would charge around 200€ for every full fretboard level, from what I've read on some forum...so yeah. Pretty crazy...

Yep. $190 USD locally for a level and polish here. The guys at my local shop are extremely well regarded and they're great guys and fabulous for repairs and custom work. But honestly I think my leveling work is as good if not better because I spend an hour or so with the crowning file and micromesh squares to ensure that there's not even the most infinitesimal amount of rock anywhere on the neck. An amount of time that the shops near me don't budget for, because I'm obnoxiously discerning...

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

Anyway, dear diary:

Today I leveled my 2 favourite guitars, the PRS SE and the Ibanez SZ. Since I want to be careful with them, I used 400 grit instead of 240.

The PRS went kind of shit, because I played the hell out of this guitar and the frets are really dented. On top of that the factory frets didn't have a lot of material. They were barely 1mm tall or even less. So I couldn't fully erase the dents, I had to stop before I took too much off. I'm not brave enough to do a re-fret yet. I read on another forum that it's a lot more complex and you should be trained professionally to do it well. So that kind of scares me
The good thing is that you can't feel the dents while playing and bending. And the guitar plays well.

The SZ went really well

One thing though, even though these guitars use medium frets. I find myself using the wide side of the S file a lot more than the narrow one. Sometimes one after the other. Whatever helps me get a better result....

 

[nightsprinter]

Anyway, dear diary:

Today I leveled my 2 favourite guitars, the PRS SE and the Ibanez SZ. Since I want to be careful with them, I used 400 grit instead of 240.

The PRS went kind of shit, because I played the hell out of this guitar and the frets are really dented. On top of that the factory frets didn't have a lot of material. They were barely 1mm tall or even less. So I couldn't fully erase the dents, I had to stop before I took too much off. I'm not brave enough to do a re-fret yet. I read on another forum that it's a lot more complex and you should be trained professionally to do it well. So that kind of scares me
The good thing is that you can't feel the dents while playing and bending. And the guitar plays well.

View attachment 147134


View attachment 147135

The SZ went really well

View attachment 147136

View attachment 147137

One thing though, even though these guitars use medium frets. I find myself using the wide side of the S file a lot more than the narrow one. Sometimes one after the other. Whatever helps me get a better result....

Get a shitty rosewood ebay neck and refret it before you do the prs. I refretted a squier neck for practice and did pretty well so I refretted a super beat schecter bass as my second and it went incredibly well. Sold it to a guy locally and I crossed paths with him several months later and he praised how well it still played. I've done several at this point.

The hardest part of refretting for me was acquiring all the tools. Expensive af. Soldering iron and Flux to heat the old frets, fret pullers to pull them, fingerboard slotting saw to clean out the slots of debris, fret wire, a bender if you don't buy pre-radiused wire segments, tang nippers, CA glue, fret press, fret cutter for the ends, then you gotta go through the entire leveling protocol. I'm probably forgetting a couple things but oh well.

But I bought all that stuff, did my practice neck, and now I can refret stuff forever. But if you don't intend to do many multiple refrets or have an insatiable appetite for learning this stuff, there's no way it would make sense to get all those tools because it would cost the same as having a luthier refret a couple of your guitars and have peace of mine you won't make a mistake.

*edit- can't forget the little fretting hammer.

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

Get a shitty rosewood ebay neck and refret it before you do the prs. I refretted a squier neck for practice and did pretty well so I refretted a super beat schecter bass as my second and it went incredibly well. Sold it to a guy locally and I crossed paths with him several months later and he praised how well it still played. I've done several at this point.

The hardest part of refretting for me was acquiring all the tools. Expensive af. Soldering iron and Flux to heat the old frets, fret pullers to pull them, fingerboard slotting saw to clean out the slots of debris, fret wire, a bender if you don't buy pre-radiused wire segments, tang nippers, CA glue, fret press, fret cutter for the ends, then you gotta go through the entire leveling protocol. I'm probably forgetting a couple things but oh well.

But I bought all that stuff, did my practice neck, and now I can refret stuff forever. But if you don't intend to do many multiple refrets or have an insatiable appetite for learning this stuff, there's no way it would make sense to get all those tools because it would cost the same as having a luthier refret a couple of your guitars and have peace of mine you won't make a mistake.

*edit- can't forget the little fretting hammer.

Thanks. I don't know, I want to learn. I'll leave it like this for now since it doesn't really give me any problems. It lasted 10 years like this, maybe it'll last another 10 and hopefully by then I can buy another SE. I've learned so much with this guitar, but it has some problems that are not worth fixing. Like for example, the truss rod rings unless it's tight. Needs .006-.008 relief all the time, or it rings. It's a good indicator of climate changes.
When it finally dies, I'll rescue the hardware from it, it has a MannMade USA bridge, Phase II tuners, Dimarzio Titans and a bunch of other visual and playability things.
Then I don't know, I'll probably curb stomp it, since it seems like that's the new fashionable thing to do..

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

I don't know maybe when the time comes I could ask a tech to replace the frets but not to do the level and crown, since I can do that. Maybe that could lower the price.

But the thing is, I still have to find a tech and well...pray that he does a good job.

I'm not sure how the tech situation here in Spain compares to the USA. But I think the knowledge isn't widely available and the standards aren't very high. So any guy with the tools or someone learning like me could do a half ass job and still charge me a lot of money. That's what I'm afraid will happen if I pick some guy at random, and that's why I've been so stubborn about learning this stuff since I was a teenager. Because that's how it is sometimes.

If I'm gonna give my guitar to a luthier, I would rather get a recommendation from a trusted person with my best interests in mind, rather a friend of the luthier who has his or her best interests in mind.

 

[Asdrael]

Anyway, dear diary:

Today I leveled my 2 favourite guitars, the PRS SE and the Ibanez SZ. Since I want to be careful with them, I used 400 grit instead of 240.

The PRS went kind of shit, because I played the hell out of this guitar and the frets are really dented. On top of that the factory frets didn't have a lot of material. They were barely 1mm tall or even less. So I couldn't fully erase the dents, I had to stop before I took too much off. I'm not brave enough to do a re-fret yet. I read on another forum that it's a lot more complex and you should be trained professionally to do it well. So that kind of scares me
The good thing is that you can't feel the dents while playing and bending. And the guitar plays well.

View attachment 147134


View attachment 147135

The SZ went really well

View attachment 147136

View attachment 147137

One thing though, even though these guitars use medium frets. I find myself using the wide side of the S file a lot more than the narrow one. Sometimes one after the other. Whatever helps me get a better result....

Good job and glad to see you building the confidence

TBH that PRS looks like it's ready for a refret. But glad to hear it's playing better.

From my perspective and my little experience on the matter, and judging from the pictures, maybe try to:
- end up with a fret that is of constant height. It seems like you sanded / leveled off more on the side that towards the middle on the PRS (I suppose to get the dents off?). If you do that too much, your bends will choke a bit too easily.
- the "flat top" is getting narrower, congrats! Now is a good time to try to get rid of it as much as you can. I am not sure how you go with the sanding and polishing but try making a kind of cigarette out of sandpaper and sand along the fret (P400 to P800) and reaching P800 start also hitting the top of the fret. You can then also start hitting the very top of the fret. This will help make them much rounder and the fret/string contact spot even narrower.
- again, difficult to see from the picture but maybe you could try a very cheap polishing approach, as it seems you still have sanding marks: once you reach P2000+ you can drop the sandpaper and go to Autosol and rub it with kitchen paper. Look at the difference it makes (this is a neck I just finished, the shiny frets are polished with autosol, the non shiny ones are P3000

Pretty easy to tell which is which, right?

Also and FWIW, if you have access to basic "woodworking" tools (drill mostly) you can build a fret bender for 10€ that is going to do a great job. And you don't really need a fret press to do fretting, a fretting hammer (20€?) is 10x less expensive and if you know how to use it will net very similar results. Sure, it will take longer, require a bit more skill and make much more noise but that's why earplugs are for

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

Good job and glad to see you building the confidence

TBH that PRS looks like it's ready for a refret. But glad to hear it's playing better.

From my perspective and my little experience on the matter, and judging from the pictures, maybe try to:
- end up with a fret that is of constant height. It seems like you sanded / leveled off more on the side that towards the middle on the PRS (I suppose to get the dents off?). If you do that too much, your bends will choke a bit too easily.
- the "flat top" is getting narrower, congrats! Now is a good time to try to get rid of it as much as you can. I am not sure how you go with the sanding and polishing but try making a kind of cigarette out of sandpaper and sand along the fret (P400 to P800) and reaching P800 start also hitting the top of the fret. You can then also start hitting the very top of the fret. This will help make them much rounder and the fret/string contact spot even narrower.
- again, difficult to see from the picture but maybe you could try a very cheap polishing approach, as it seems you still have sanding marks: once you reach P2000+ you can drop the sandpaper and go to Autosol and rub it with kitchen paper. Look at the difference it makes (this is a neck I just finished, the shiny frets are polished with autosol, the non shiny ones are P3000

View attachment 147147

Pretty easy to tell which is which, right?

Also and FWIW, if you have access to basic "woodworking" tools (drill mostly) you can build a fret bender for 10€ that is going to do a great job. And you don't really need a fret press to do fretting, a fretting hammer (20€?) is 10x less expensive and if you know how to use it will net very similar results. Sure, it will take longer, require a bit more skill and make much more noise but that's why earplugs are for

Thanks for all the feedback and advice. My polishing is really basic, I clean the sides of the frets with a 400 grit polishing rubber, then 1000 grit rubber, then softly erasing the marker on top of the frets. Since I don't have any higher grit stuff I don't really try to make them shiny, just sort of clean so it doesn't look dirty. I'll get some higher grit things eventually.

You're right about me leveling more on one side than the other, I could actually use some advice with this. This wasn't such a big deal yesterday as much as it was with the 8 string. Because there, I did level that more on one side than the other, but thankfully I don't have any problems with the guitar's playability.

So far I've done 5 guitars, and the center of the fretboard has always been the easiest to level. But the fret ends are always tricky and need a lot of leveling, and I mean a lot. The whole fretboard was 98% leveled but those fret ends had me going for a lot more time. So much that I started wondering if I now need to take off this same amount from the whole fretboard? Because if I do, I could be taking off too much? So I wasn't sure what to do.

But you're right. Leveling the frets unevenly sounds like a nightmare to fix. Can you even fix it or you just have to replace the frets? During the level you can see how wide the flat leveled part is and that shows you how much you've leveled. But after crowning you lose that point of reference. So what then?

 

[Asdrael]

To level more evenly, do not apply any pressure on the beam and run it from one side to the other and lift to get back (that is both from bridge to nut and from e to E). That will already help. Also I would say that unless your frets look terrible 240 would be to abrasive and lead to a lot of mistakes. I personally hover around 320-400 but I know some prefer 600+.

Also just by a couple a sheets of sandpaper of increasing grit really. I think for 10€ you can have some more than sufficient of all grits here for example .

And you don't need any point of reference for the height after leveling as the crowning shouldn't change that, and 1000+ grit sand paper would make any difference at the top really.