Bought a set of Nut files this week!

[Rex]

On the nut I found the reasons that the strings were hanging up and with a few light strokes of the right sized files and followed up with a light polish I restrung the guitar and tuned up to pitch. This morning the first thing I did was to use the Trem and no more ping ping ping!

Cool! That's exactly what's supposed to happen. Feels good to have done that, doesn't it?

...after a few hours with Micro mesh I was able to polish out the minor divots in the first 5 frets and make the rest very shiny.

I don't recommend polishing frets for "a few hours." You can wind up lowering the frets so far that they're no longer level. That can affect your ability to play without string buzz.

 

[Sixstring]

Cool! That's exactly what's supposed to happen. Feels good to have done that, doesn't it?


I don't recommend polishing frets for "a few hours." You can wind up lowering the frets so far that they're no longer level. That can affect your ability to play without string buzz.

Yes it does! It is something that I have always wanted to get into but never took the time to deal with it. I'll tell you what A headband magnifier really helps! You get to see the string scratches the wound strings leave!

Ha! The time that was taken was running through 6 different grits starting at 1500 and ending 4000 on each fret! probably a little overkill but turned out really nice! I was careful not to take more than was needed to clean up the divots which really weren't that deep. The frets feel much smother didn't really notice any difference in string buzz.

 

[Sixstring]

Awesome - I'm finding it very rewarding to learn to do my own setups and minor luthiering, tho its taking some help, study, good tools, and practice. I've come to believe that some of the "specialness" in a guitar is actually in the setup. I realized this after tinkering with setup on some guitars that I had no previous "bond" with, and there was suddenly some magic appearing in terms of my "connection" with the instrument. Made me look at things a little differently when trying out guitars in store - even if they are well set up by the store staff, my own setup might be able to bring something else out of it since it the most personalized set up there can be - of course I've had newb screwups too where I lost a good feeling from a guitar due to mal-setup and had trouble recovering it - luckily never any irreversible damage to a good guitar (a beater guitar I use for luthiering practice damaged here and there but that's what I have it for).

For sure! I found myself sweating bullets working the Gretsch! It has been one of the fussiest guitars I have ever owned! A lot of quirky even clunky things to work on, definitely not your typical trem style guitar and light years from a beater. Thankfully no major oopsies while I was OJTing it .

 

[Rex]

I've come to believe that some of the "specialness" in a guitar is actually in the setup. I realized this after tinkering with setup on some guitars that I had no previous "bond" with, and there was suddenly some magic appearing in terms of my "connection" with the instrument.

Yes! If the guitar is sound and the nut, bridge and frets are true, Setup can be the difference between plays-like-crap and superb.

 

[Rex]

Ha! The time that was taken was running through 6 different grits starting at 1500 and ending 4000 on each fret! probably a little overkill but turned out really nice! I was careful not to take more than was needed to clean up the divots which really weren't that deep. The frets feel much smother didn't really notice any difference in string buzz.

That’s a good range of grits to go through. I like to end with metal polish. You get a beautiful shine, but there’s a little cleanup to do afterward.

I’ve found that I get good results by doubling the grit count as I progress through the grits. In your case, that would be 1500, 3000 and 4000. Save you some steps. Still, if that took longer than 20 minutes, I’d be concerned about changing the level or the overall fret radius. I’m glad it worked out for you.