Official Luthiers Forum!

I am working on re-fretting a 1966 Gibson Byrdland and made a surprising discovery. The neck starts at the nut with a 7.25" radius and gradually gets to 12" at about the 14th fret. Does anyone know of Gibson doing compound radius on any of their models back then? Perhaps it was a custom request?
Just curious.

Thanks,
Steve

My guess is on an instrument of that age, it may have been worked on a number of times and simply ended up this way. I'd like to hear more about the guitar....

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

I think you are on to something. After further inspection I can tell that the neck has been re-fretted numerous times with all the ebony chipping and widening of the fret slots. By the time I dug out all the CA glue the slots were still not deep enough and some of the inlay markers are paper thin. By this I at least know that the fretboard has at least been sanded down at some point. Perhaps this is how the radius got out of wack. Maybe I should just clean everything up so the new frets seat flush and don't try to re-radius it back to 12" through? The owner never complained about any radius issues anyway. What do you think? This does make the re-freting a little tricky however.

Thanks,
Steve