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I have an old fender neck that was chunked and I thought it'd be a good chance to try a compression refret. The twist has been removed, just has a permanent bow to the neck. If it doesn't work then it's not a big deal, just wanted to try it.

Just curious what wire you guys have used for the job?

Hey Dan - It depends and all compression refrets also depend. What they depend on is how badly the forward bow is AND how snuggly the fret slots fit the compression refret wire.

As you know the idea is to use over or undersized wire tangs to induce forward or back bow. This makes which wire we use and where a function of how much work in over coming the forward or back bow that exists in the neck.

Typically the slots are cleaned out and made homogeneous and then we see which wire will fit without needing to be forced more so then what would be an appropriate division of the labor for the tangs. Or, in other words we would use over sized tangs every several or so frets or to a lesser degree lesser over sized tangs more often.

As such under string tension we might install say five evenly divided frets over the area of the neck that actually bows, if the extension is not part of the bow it can be avoided.

Then we string up, tune to pitch and observe if it looks like we can project with more frets the countering bow that we need. I might restring and observe three time during the refret as more frets are installed.

https://www.jescar.com/fret-wire-specifications/

On the Jescar spec chart you can see the compression wire in the .080 X .037 listing and what a wide range there is. We have all sizes because we can't know which one will work best where.

Typically several tang or more sizes may be employed to shape a neck on a pre-truss-rod Martin.

In summary we can't know exactly which wires sizes our neck will need in the range of available sizes because we have to determine this as the work in progress of a compression neck reset occurs and how it looks.

One might be able to get by will a smaller range of the tang sizes available but that might also force one into compromises so we stock all available sizes for this reason.

We've done compression, or our students have, Steve S. IIRC in our classes before. It's a bit more involved then a standard refret but not difficult if you fundamentally understand the concept of how we counter or permit the neck to bow as it needs to for where we wish to go.

Let me know if I can help, happy to do so.

Hey Hesh thanks for the response, I welcome any help you can offer.

Regarding this bow, the neck is from a 5 string bass, truss rod isn't broken but it simply doesn't have enough strength to correct the problem. I didn't want to force it and thankfully it was never forced to a point where it broke or became unusable.

The bow is exactly in the center of the neck and the extension is not part of it. If you can visualize what it looks like when you back off a truss rod all the way that's essentially what has happened to this neck.

So judging from what you wrote about doing a few frets at a time. It seems like starting from the middle of the neck might be a good way to get a feel for how much overbow can be induced? Or did I read that wrong?

Yep you've got it, start in the middle where the forward bow is most profound. Use the fattest tangs that you can find right where the bow is the worst, restring with only say several frets in place and see what you have. During the restrings and tuning to pitch you can tell if this is going to work pretty early on. If there is too much forward bow fret tangs alone won't do it and the neck is likely SOL.

One down side of compression refretting is you are limited to a fret selection that are more appropriate for Martins and not base guitars.

Call me in the shop during the week buddy if I can help. Number is on our web site.

Dan, did you try to force an up bow and reintroduce the rod? sometimes gets results

I am not a expert by any means, but I can see compression in the neck jig at starting in the neighborhood of a fret slot and tang size of 1:1

So many variables though.

Dan, there are some oversize tang wires tucked into Jescars specs that are larger than the Martin vintage re-fret stuff. Some cheap guitar brands have mongo oversize slots that I use the stuff on. Might fit your bill. 55x90 I think w/ a.025 tang

Hesh, thank you for the offer. I will give you a call sometime this week if I have time. Right now I've got a stack some 25 instruments deep to work through. But I'm sure I'll find a few minutes here and there to call.

Daveflis. I did try that actually, the amount of tension required of the rod to hold the neck in a proper amount of relief was more than I wanted to induce on the rod.

David farmer, I take a look at the Jescar stuff, thanks for the tip!

Talk soon Dan, I've been wanting to meet you too for a couple of years now so please do call.