Rex
Dignified but Approachable
This is the first time this has ever happened to me, and I'm so chuffed that I just have to shout a little. I just refretted a guitar, and it doesn't need any fret leveling! At all!
The guitar is a 2003 Austin AU792. It's one of those dirt-cheap gem guitars — pretty, very well made, very resonant, and feels wonderful in the hand. $235.99 on Reverb.
The only problem was that the first fret was extremely low. Like ten thousandths too low. It was impossible to play first-position stuff without ridiculously high action. Normally, I'd have returned it; if I had to pay someone to fix it, the cost would be more than I paid for the guitar. But this one's a keeper, and it was worth fixing up.
So I pulled out the old frets, planed the fingerboard, fashioned some new frets from 104 x 47 stainless steel stock, and pressed and glued them in. Then I strung it up to see how much leveling I'd have to do. I was stunned — and thrilled — to find that the frets were dead flat to less than .0015", with just a little fall-away at the high end that I'd planed in to begin with. No need to touch those frets with abrasives, or to crown them and clean up the mess afterward.
I can only chalk up some of that to skill. There's some dumb luck involved, too. Everything has to work out just right, from the width of the fret slots to the thickness of the tangs to the condition of the wood to the humidity in the air. But I'm stoked to be able to say that I got there once.
The fret ends are beveled now. All that's left is a little file work on the corners and finishing the fret ends. Oh, and I'll have to roll the edges of the fingerboard — I had to take off a ton of wood to flatten the board, and the edges are pretty sharp.
The guitar is a 2003 Austin AU792. It's one of those dirt-cheap gem guitars — pretty, very well made, very resonant, and feels wonderful in the hand. $235.99 on Reverb.
The only problem was that the first fret was extremely low. Like ten thousandths too low. It was impossible to play first-position stuff without ridiculously high action. Normally, I'd have returned it; if I had to pay someone to fix it, the cost would be more than I paid for the guitar. But this one's a keeper, and it was worth fixing up.
So I pulled out the old frets, planed the fingerboard, fashioned some new frets from 104 x 47 stainless steel stock, and pressed and glued them in. Then I strung it up to see how much leveling I'd have to do. I was stunned — and thrilled — to find that the frets were dead flat to less than .0015", with just a little fall-away at the high end that I'd planed in to begin with. No need to touch those frets with abrasives, or to crown them and clean up the mess afterward.
I can only chalk up some of that to skill. There's some dumb luck involved, too. Everything has to work out just right, from the width of the fret slots to the thickness of the tangs to the condition of the wood to the humidity in the air. But I'm stoked to be able to say that I got there once.
The fret ends are beveled now. All that's left is a little file work on the corners and finishing the fret ends. Oh, and I'll have to roll the edges of the fingerboard — I had to take off a ton of wood to flatten the board, and the edges are pretty sharp.
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