Official Luthiers Forum!

Although Robin Hood might have appreciated this style of fret ends players, especially better players won't.

This is a Dave Collins photo of a G*bson f*ctory fret job on a G*bson acoustic and our forensic analysis indicates that this is original fret work, so does the owner..... You can even see black paint over spray on the sides of the highly.... polished.... cough, cough, sniff, sniff fret ends... Me, I'm not opinionated....

It was in because one of the sides with no side reinforcement, tapes, etc. split over a greater than 1 foot long area. The other side had already split and had already been repaired by someone else in the past. Nothing like consistency....

Interestingly the degree of radical freternarian malpractice is mitigated as the frets approached the body joint likely because the body was in the way of the poor technique and or the tool used to do this.

Anyway don't do this, please.

NOTE: Hesh is not picking on G*bson again.... I post interesting things that we encounter and this often means lousy workmanship. It's not my fault that I see far more of it on G*bsons..... For the Record my favorite guitars are Kalamazoo G*bsons. We are always harder on the ones that we love.....

Looks like Gibson has embraced the shabby chic look for fretting, but heavey on the shabby part.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

That makes me very sad.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Because my mom always encouraged me to try and find something positive to say, I'll just add that the strings appear to be nicely wound.

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George :-)

Is that actually original? Or did someone attempt to improve something?


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Not me man, it makes me money!

Merry Christmas!

That's the spirit!

One of the posters here said on our facebook page that he has garden tools finished better than this. I read that and laughed out loud.

Orignal, this ax belongs to a well known gigging and recording musician and she has never had it serviced before except for the two over a foot long side cracks.... We actually had to "finish the manufacture" of the guitar and install side supports since the sides are paper thin and splitting if you look at them wrong. It's an interesting exercise installing side supports in a closed box.... Magnets are your friends...

Strong mags I imagine!
Glad you said that I have some great ones I use to use for my coral aquariums! Super sting... like pinch off a nail strong ..
Maaaaaybe too much for wood ha


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Hesh... are y’all going to refret the thing?


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No these frets are not a problem for this player who has a very light touch and essentially does finger style only in a rhythm capacity. No string bending or lead playing for this player making these fret ends not a problem for her. She had never noticed them until we pointed them out. The guitar was in for a split side crack.

You know this is so true of lots of issues with guitars that although we may notice it the players may not. Take Martins with the mislocated saddles in the early 70's. Many of these were never noticed until the instrument changed hands and the new steward plays something other than the cowboy chord positions.

Many early G*bsons AND some of the 20 or so other names that G*bson built under had terrible fret spacing but players back in the day except for Maybe Robert Johnson and some of the other great players never noticed it.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas to ya too B!