Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi folks!

I'm hoping someone can help me out. I just purchased a 50th Anniversary '58 ES 335. It's an awesome guitar and I got it at a great price. The reason the price was so good was because it was sold as "B Stock" with the following description; "Fretboard uneven - frets dressed to compensate - plays well".

Now, at the moment, the guitar plays and sounds great and I can't see any problem when I look at the neck, but, my question is; is this something I should be overly concerned with? Will this have any relevance if I ever need to have the frets dressed or a re-fret?

I did e-mail Gibson customer service, and the reply stated that without seeing the guitar, they couldn't comment on whether or not this issue could lead to problems down the road.

If anyone has any insights about this situation, I would greatly appreciate your input! Thanks in advance.

Gibson told you that because they can't qualify the issue any better than us. If it's a slight unevenness then it's a slight amount of additional work on a refret. But if it's out quite a bit there might be quite a bit of work to make it play well. Who can say without looking at it?

You could try to post some pics that revealed how high some frets are to others but it would take some pretty good photos.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Hah every Gibson I've ever looked at has some slight unevenness to it! If Gibson noticed it and labeled it a "B" stock because of it, it must be bad indeeed!
However, if it plays fine and intonates properly, I wouldn't worry about it.
You say the frets have been levelled to compensate, and it plays good. Some frets will have less crown as a result, so that may affect future fret dresses, depending on how much they had to compensate.
If the guitar is refretted, it depends on the skill of the technician as to whether they can handle it properly.
Talk to them and have them tell you exactly how they would do it. There should be no guessing, no "I won't know 'till I get the frets out", or anything like that. It's a very common thing to do during a refret.
I use 18 inch long aluminum radius beams to level the fretboard on guitars whenever I do a refret, and have corrected fretboard unevenness on a wide variety of instruments.
The reason Gibson fretboards are uneven is because of their build process, IMO.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Thanks for the responses folks, I appreciate it!
The guitar does play really well at this point, so I guess I can assume that if the frets were adjusted to compensate for something this time, it could be done again if fretwork is ever needed.