Official Luthiers Forum!

Got a ragged out G&L Legacy Strat in for a re-fret with Stainless Steel frets, and to address several issues. I had been planning to re-fret my 1997 b-bender tele with SS frets and decided to get off the fence and get er done.

Pulled the frets on both guitars and leveled the fretboards, milled in a skosh more relief on the bass side a smidge less on the treble and fall away to address the "ski" ramp below the 12 frets. The G&L got its white plastic fretboard dots replaced with abalone dots. Carved the body "neck pocket" to match Fenders "Jeff Beck" heel plate (G&L) and made new bone nuts, (both had plastic nuts from the factory). Pretty much what we learned during the excellent fretting and setup class at Ann Arbor Guitars.

Very cool Greg!!!

Nice.
Replacing plastic with bone, shell, and a good refret is simply making the world a better place.
It still hasn't gotten old for me.

Nice work, Greg! Not much work to recrown those frets, I'll bet!

Alex

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

Why no bevel on the fret ends? Also I like to round off the ends of the nut. Can you tell I am into comfort?

Nut ends are rounded off, I do 99% of the fitting on the guitar then pretty it up before it's glued in place.

Fret ends have a 5 degree bevel, maximize your fretboard real estate

I have decreased my bevel angle over the years. I started at 45 then went to 35 and now am about at 20 degrees. But 5 degrees is almost no bevel. Yes, your real estate is maximized but do you not bump into the fret ends as you slide your hand along the neck?

5 degrees is pretty minimal.
On the other hand:
Once I did a quick refret on a shop beater I use and do experiments on. Same tall wire, I gave it a full triangular profile with Stew Mac's Z-file. I wanted to see how much less fret-hand pressure would be require with a knife edge and how long such a narrow fret top would last. I just filed the ends flush and was too busy/lazy to finish. The fret ends would draw blood if you hit them. After a surprisingly short time, my body just adapted and it doesn't seem relevant. I still haven't dressed the ends it doesn't bother me at all.
Tough sell to customers though!

I think that would depend on one's style. I like to wrap my thumb around to fret bass strings so both sides of the neck need to be really smooth. I can't imagine leaving the ends sharp. Ouch!

It's not really 5 degrees because the frets are rounded somewhat semi hemispherically. Glad my spell checker just was working....

In our fretting courses that both Greg and Alex took we teach people that the radical bevels are simply what f*ctories did and do to avoid the semi skilled labor required to round fret ends nicely and precisely....

These days we are refretting instruments near daily. We have three in at present for refrets. People rave about our work (you can read the reviews yourselves...) and one of the features of our fret jobs is we preserve most of the valuable fret top surface that better players crave and even ask us for.

I've told the story here before about the weekend wedding, greaseball player who came to us all pissed off because someone else fretted his beloved Les Paul with 35 degree fret end bevels. After we reached an understanding with him that he was a guest in our shop and we have no obligation to him what so ever since he had not been our client and after he apologized... we told him what our approach was to fret ends. It was exactly what he wanted and we refretted his LP and he was happy as a clam over it. He gave us a five star review too.

You don't run into well rounded fret ends and they are not proud of the edge of the neck. Barry if you are ever out our way we have lots of examples that you can play to see what we mean. Instead thumb overs are actually easier especially with poor nut spacing because of the extra top surface. Players who pull the high e off the neck and it even gets stuck under lousy f*ctory fret work lose this issue too with our fret ends.

It's a difficult thing to photograph because when we are done there are no scratches either but in a day or two when another Les Paul is done with the refret I'll ask Dave to get out the macro lenses and take or try to take some pics of how we do fret ends.

By the way our ends with semi-hemi ends are shaped on the instrument and in less than 5 minutes (for all of them). Fret ends shaped off the instrument look like s*** to us because they never line up evenly.

Pics to come, GREAT work Greg!

Lastly slotted, cheap moulded plastic pins are the norm too. Does this make them optimal.......

Like Hesh so eloquently stated its not a problem, you certainly feel the frets but with no sharp edges you get used to it pretty quickly. Fingers love it, more room to wobble around

And the very satisfied customer. Check him out on You Tube Ben Eller Guitars 120,000 some odd subscribers

Nice, Greg. That trip up to AA was so worth it!

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

This is my fret job from Hesh and David's class, and was the second one that I had done.
As an inexperienced builder, I wanted to learn one way of FB prep and fretting, and not have to unlearn a method that might not give the results that I hoped to get.
Not to let the cat out of the bag, but the methods that I learned, and why, are, ahem, stupid easy! I think Steve, Greg and I had a few gob smacked moments!

Alex


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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

Beautiful work Alex and Greg!!!

Alex is right too nothing is really difficult about this and most folks are surprised at how easy it actually is when you learn methods that provide excellent results.

The real beauty of these fret jobs though has not been discussed. The level set of the fret planes is accurate to less than .001" or more precisely the thickness on a quick swipe of magic marker ink. What's this buy you or your clients? The ability if their playing style can support it for action stupid low in the neighborhood of 2/64th" for the high e at the 12th and 3/64th" for the low e at the 12th.

These fret boards also have correct relief prior to fretting or more specifically more relief on the bass side and less on the treble side.

Lastly these guys are doing repair work and for some pretty demanding clients too it seems. Players who want very high quality work. Refrets also depending on your geographic location and local market can bring $450 for 3 - 4 hours of work.