No leveling needed!

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.

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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.


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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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Nice work. I find if you make sure the fingerboard is good and true and you press the frets in more often than not little or no levelling will be needed. None at all is nice though .
 
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Nice work. I find if you make sure the fingerboard is good and true and you press the frets in more often than not little or no levelling will be needed. None at all is nice though .
Yeah, I’ve had “little,” but never “none” until now.
 
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And not on a bolt on too. I don't think I've ever had one that wasn't. It's all the fingerboard levelling you did, good stuff.
 
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Very nice! I do my refrets with basic hand tools, and always have to level(tons of work). One of these days I would like to have a press and a fret wire bender, It may not help with my skills, but it could not hurt.
 
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Some suppliers of fretwire will pre radius it for you so you don't need a fret bender if you only do a few.
Also this fret press is a lot cheaper than the StewMac one and it's just as effective.
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Not expensive at all.
 
Some suppliers of fretwire will pre radius it for you so you don't need a fret bender if you only do a few.
Also this fret press is a lot cheaper than the StewMac one and it's just as effective.
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Not expensive at all.
We keep loops of fretwire stocked in various sizes and materials. The loops are pre-radiused to just under 12”. The radius on this guitar is 16”, so I had to straighten the fretwire first. That never gives me uniform results, so radiusing it isn’t uniform, either. I have to bend in a slightly lower radius to ensure that the entire loop is at least radiused enough. Pre-radiused fretwire would have been helpful.

We have that press in the shop, and also the screw version of it. I prefer the screw version. The vice-grip version tends to jump when you release it, while the screw version just gently lets go.
 
Very nice! I do my refrets with basic hand tools, and always have to level(tons of work). One of these days I would like to have a press and a fret wire bender, It may not help with my skills, but it could not hurt.
The right tools can turn a chore into a delight.
 
And not on a bolt on too. I don't think I've ever had one that wasn't. It's all the fingerboard levelling you did, good stuff.
I had a little advantage there. See that gizmo on the bench in the second picture? That’s a jig that Dave made for fretting his Cloud replicas, which are neck-through. The steel bar lets you press the fret press uniformly along the entire length of the neck. No weirdness when you get to the heel. The jig adjusts to any neck angle, so it gets used for all sorts of set-in-neck instruments, too.
 
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I had a little advantage there. See that gizmo on the bench in the second picture? That’s a jig that Dave made for fretting his Cloud replicas, which are neck-through. The steel bar lets you press the fret press uniformly along the entire length of the neck. No weirdness when you get to the heel. The jig adjusts to any neck angle, so it gets used for all sorts of set-in-neck instruments, too.
Excellent.
 
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@Andy Eagle Where did you find the fret press in your picture? Do they have the screw variety?

EDIT: Never mind. I see you posted a link. :)
 
The cheap screw variety don't work well, I had one and it tended to twist slightly and not hold the fret dead straight .The one I posted seems fine though.
 
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