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To better illustrate it with pics. After doing this I can use the same sanding beam on top of the frets to crown them. I've never gotten so good at frets till I got this beam.

First I glue it down with a caul that extends over the body joint to get it nice and flat:


Then use radius blocks followed by the beam to get it just right:

Question, - it looks there may be just the smallest space under that front left corner of the fret board. If not and it contacts the upper bout perfectly level then never mind but it brings up another question regarding fall off on the fingerboard above the body joint fret. Some say it's desirable, others don't mention it and shoot for 'perfectly' level fret board above the body join fret.

Does anyone glue the fret board with that fall off figured in using a caul that has that fall off radius? Or is perfectly flat acceptable and any fall off, if desired, sanded in later?

jf, do you sand in any fall off or do you get as flat as possible with your beam and rely on relief for upper fret clearance as needed?

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I bend the end of my fb's down at the 14th just a bit. FB is unprofiled at that time...I just use a flat caul and clamp it down...

Thanks Ed...

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Oh yeah eh!

There is no space, everything is dead flat. I don't do any fall away. I don't understand the need for that. I think people do it to prevent a hump in the future when the guitar scrunches up a bit? I don't know but I like dead flat. It seems to me that the closer you get to the saddle the less you need in terms of fret clearance. The angle is greater to the saddle so there is even less buzzing issues.

#2 for me on solid body necks.
I level the board, cut the slots, then cut the taper.
I glue the board to my neck blank, radius the board, and then taper the neck to match the board.
Then I fret.
I find it easier to work if most of the neck surfaces are still flat. Easy to clamp when radiusing, and easier to press in frets.
After I glue on the board, I let it sit for a few days to let the assembly settle before radius.

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Thanks, Appreciate the feedback...

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Fretting with the neck attached also allows some last minute drop off management. You can fret to around 10 so neck stiffness is the way it going to be, support the headstock and add 10-12lbs of weight to the upper bout to simulate string tension and see what the drop off is doing under string load.

You can still sand a little in if there is an unexpected rise.

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I remember a Taylor shop tour video (not saying it's gospel) and Bob Taylor mentioned the science behind their necks, which are CNC'd and jigged up etc. of course and he mentioned that they engineered in some drop/fall off in their neck design. Not saying it's a good idea, and have never done it intentionally, totally understand the dead level argument - just sayin'...

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When do you fret is a question that also must consider what kind of results you require and for whom.

If you are building a dread with mediums for a flat picking blue grasser your fret plane can be pretty imprecise and you may get away with it. Higher action, heavier strings that have more inertia to overcome bang in the frets and you could be fine.

OTOH if you are building for finger stylists who desire low action or even flat pickers who want low action fall away is desirable. Should we bring up electrics and shredders............

We do fret work nearly every day and around 50% of the time the very need for a client to pay for a fret dress is because the the instrument is fretting out in the body fret region because of no fall away...... Fender style bolt on necks are notorious for developing a ski ramp with the over the body frets.

Fall away and inducing/milling in fall away serves a couple of purposes in our experience:

1). It's a hedge against things settling in with say a bit of a body hump on an acoustic or a ski ramp on a bolt-on electric. These undesirable things and their impact can be minimized if not eliminated by simply creating some fall away.

2). Not having fall away is very often the single limiting factor in not being able to get the action as low as desired. Or, in other words it can make the thing harder to play for many players.

3). If you are a demanding player or have clients who are demanding players and low action is desired fall away is pretty much required to keep the body frets out of the freakin way.

Most of the time it takes me to do a fret dress is in achieving the shape that I want for a neck. This includes more relief on the bass side, less on the treble side and fall away beginning around the 12th and equaling around .015" of fall away at the last. Fall away does not have to be that precise that's just what I built to and what we shoot for with the hundreds of fret dresses and refrets that we've done.

So to summarize it may not be important to you if you are a hobbyist and the wood working of building a guitar is your primary interest and the instrument will not be played by anyone desiring low action and excellent playability over the complete fret board.

OTOH if you are commercial in either selling instruments or repairing them you are going to have to deal with ski ramps and body humps and understanding and being able to achieve fall away is both required and important for quality, consistent value and results.

One of our friends and clients is a retired US Marine who bought a $9K arch top from a small builder out east. He was pissed that he could not achieve the low action he likes because there was no fall away. Of course we have to charge for our work and he was fine with that but no one should ever have to pay repair guys to redo a fret plane on a brand new guitar. The builder was going to pay us to redo the fret work but I refused and won't except any third party payers in our work except Martin for warranty work. We are here to do the work not chase payment so if it's going to be complicated getting paid we decline on the work. Anyway the client paid out of his pocket (with a thank you for your very valued service discount that we provide to US Military and retired Military). The client is no longer friendly with the builder and has expressed that he now wishes that he had bought something else....

A completely related topic is fretting with the board and neck on or off the instrument. Wood moves, guitars settle in and the only way to ensure that your fret plane has the quality and shape that you require is to fret the board on the neck, neck on the guitar. Mario P. with a strict methodology and rigid adherence to his methods as per his excellent article in Guitar Maker from over ten years ago now could and can pull off fretting a board off an instrument. But short of this it's just so much more precise and easier in my experience to fret the guitar after it's construction is over.

Lastly even if your style of instrument and playing may not require any fall away stuff moves.... things change... creating fall away is a hedge against things changing and future more demanding players. It's also a hedge against having a relationship with a client go south because you didn't do something that could have prevented their woes.....

Thanks Hesh, Great write up and information...

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I remembering having this discussion with you before Hesh on the concept of fall away. Of the 3 bullet points I can understand #1, that is a hedge in case something happens in the future. But the following two bullet points suggest that you get better and lower playing action by creating fall away, something that causes the string heights to be further away from the frets? As you fret a string closer and closer to the saddle the angle that the string makes from the fret to the saddle is greater and therefore needs even less care, for lack of a better word, regarding fret buzz. So why drop off the fretboard plane in an area that seems less to need it?

I can understand this logic but I wonder if having some fall away doesn't help lower the action simply because the angle when fretting closer to the nut is so shallow (making your point re: angle and distance from the saddle) that a little fall away helps achieve a lower action along the entire board? Not just the higher frets where, as you suggest, it's not really needed?

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Curious as well, does fall away cause any discernable real world problems? Any reason, for playability sake, not to engineer some in?

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Because even though you are closer to the saddle some people desire and require action low enough that being close to the saddle is not good enough. The instrument frets out. You should be able to bend two steps up at any location on the board without the note choking.

Player attack has bearing here. Some players can play moderately hard without driving the strings into the frets, many cannot.

If you could freeze frame and look at the wave form of a vibrating string it's lashing outward, up, down, left, right, etc is least close to the nut and saddle but in the region of 1/3 or more along the string's "speaking length" (the part of the string not choked by the nut or saddle) the string lashes out the most or may lash out the most. this makes anywhere from say the 5th through the last need to be fairly precise, true, straight etc.

Now consider this, we change the speaking length when we fret and where the string lashes out more moves as well closer... to the saddle which may in fact be the extension frets where fall away is desirable and why.

Note too where is the string plucked? It's plucked very close to the fall away area and the very act of plucking the strings has it lashing outward more there too.

Again for a blue grass dread with 13's fall away may not be, depending on the player as important as for the heavy metal vomit music shredder with his/her Floyd Rose POS copy made out of tin cans.... Me, I'm not judgmental... no way not me. But for the demanding players who want low action it makes a difference.

Mario P. and many of the top builders I know mill in fall away. Mario is who educated me about it and he's right.

So with this said in reality there are a host of reasons when and why fall away is desirable. Some are player dependent, some string and action dependent, some have to do with how wood moves and your build may develop something not planned and all of these reasons have to do with physics. Some reasons are because of the music one plays, really! Shredding tuned in low C requires pretty accurate fret work or notes are going to choke with that little tension on the strings.

You may not bend two whole steps at the 12th or 14th but many of our professional musician clients do so we have to work to a standard that gets folks where they want to go most of them anyway.

Just remembered too a few more things.

Some of the better f*ctories mill in fall away with their PLEKs now and folks here who do any volume of repair work have seen this too. I'm not going to name names since I'm in the biz and have business relationship with some of these producers. They see the need though as do we and many notable builders do too.

And lastly.... I personally do a lot of work with folks who have some challenges when they play. They may be very young with small hands or what I see nearly every day older folks, my age 60's who have lost hand strength or have arthritis.

I specialize in making their guitar easier to play for them and this has become one of the niches that has been helpful for all concerned.

So Mr. Client has hand strength issues and needs the guitar easier to play. Lower action and lighter gauge strings you might say and that would be one approach and an approach that I use.

But along with that is the same player who notices that 12's are not as loud as 13's so he plucks harder and the string lashes out more than the 13's did. This is also important to know too. Lighter gauge strings have LESS inertia to over come so they lash out further easier which is counter to what we might think. Or in other words there is no real guarantee that lighter strings will be capable of lower action because of this.

Now consider the extreme case where 10's on a Dread are the answer and a pup..... Even more lash out again because of less inertia to over come.

There are very complex interplays in these "systems" of vibrating strings and fall away is just one of the things that if not addressed often becomes an issue for many, many players.

We've never had a fret dress or fret job come back because someone can fret out on the upper register frets.

Is there any potential down side to engineering in fall away?

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Is there any potential down side to engineering in fall away?

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Is there any potential down side to engineering in fall away?

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Never mind...

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No downside, done right it is all good from my perspective. At the high end store where I sold for a number of years fall away was one of the first things they looked at in evaluating a new guitar. Any extension rise was grounds for rejection.

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Thanks Terence. Did/do you engineer in a specific fall away amount as Hesh suggests .015 above? Or simply ensure there was some fall away?

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Larry I use a total bolt on neck similar to the Bourgeois design and as has been discussed in many previous threads they definitely move more in the first six-twelve months than a glued extension. A rising fretboard extension over the body can be an issue and definitely was for me early on.

By trial and error and looking at movement of guitars I saw back after a year or more I figured out that if the fretboard plane on the upper bout without frets just hits the top of the bridge that upper bout angle will usually provide adequate drop off. So basically I engineer the drop off into the upper bout angle.

I level and fret with the neck on the guitar and that affords the ability to support the headstock and weight the upper bout to simulate string tension during that process and fine tune the transition if needed.

After fretting and string up I like to see something in the .020-.026 area to allow for further settling. For a glued extension I think I would be fine with Hesh's lower figure but I think dead straight on a new guitar may be asking for trouble down the line if it is for a player that uses the whole neck and wants low action.

Probably the only way to determine how much drop off you need is to see your guitars back in a year or two and see how much they settle. Neck attachment technique and upper bout structural rigidity play a big role.

Seems like there are no hard and fast rules, after all it is wood. you think you have it nailed but still get surprised.

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REALLY appreciate the time and reply. I've not thought much about drop off fall away even though the action on my previous guitars has been pretty good. I'm going to fret after installing the neck and test and evaluate before final fret board plane and fall away.

Thanks again

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