Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Tech => Topic started by: gwEm on March 12, 2015, 03:06:32 PM
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What should I look out for? One of my older guitars has rather low frets. Still plays ok, but was wondering.
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I'm no expert, but if I was fearing that one was needed, I'd take it along to Jonathan asking for a fret-dress - ready to refret if he said it couldn't be dressed...
Oh, hang on - do you do your own fret-dresses?
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I'm no expert, but if I was fearing that one was needed, I'd take it along to Jonathan asking for a fret-dress - ready to refret if he said it couldn't be dressed...
Oh, hang on - do you do your own fret-dresses?
I toyed with the idea of doing them, but having seen Feline actually do one live decided it was best left to the pros.
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On my guitars, if it plays ok for me, I can tune it, etc, I tend to live with it. But then I'm not playing live any more and using one guitar a lot, wanting to rely on it.
I understand you can dress them real low (depending on the relief you and your string gauge etc need), but obviously less frets is going to feel somewhat different.
If it's one of your main axes, I'd probably take it in for Jonathan to check it out. No matter what the treatment is, it's probably going to feel like a new guitar and a joy to play again.
The only one I've refretted so far was my Baja tele. That was quite new when I did it, but I was chewing into frets at an alarming rate. Took it into Feline, Jonathan explained how fret dressing was fine, and could be done several times with the existing frets. We discussed how fast I was eating them, and I decided to refret then (partly cos I fancied bigger frets as well). That's a few years ago, and there's still only minor wear now. Haven't used it much in the past year, but a year two ago I was using it a lot.
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This guitar is a bit special. She only arrived today, and I'll do a post at some point. I fully plan on doing some gigging with her. Been playing all evening and I've decided that a fret polish is probably all that's needed.
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What did you get Gwem?
You can always pop in with it - happy to look her over
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Yeah, take it to Jonathan-he'll see you right. For me, my old Strat was getting virtually impossible to tune , by which I mean that I'd tune to what I would normally think was fine and as soon as I fretted notes, it would sound wrong so I'd have to tune slightly sharp or flat to get it to sound reasonably in tune.
After the refret , no such problems. I was very nervous because it had had years of usage and was my oldest guitar and when I collected it afterwards from Jonathan, I was very happy to find that the guitar still felt right.
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gwEm knows my work only too well and we have had the pleasure of doing a number of things in the past for him.
Glad the strat is rocking you still Mr 38th!
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Cheers Jonathan- I have the Gibson mods still in my head . The Blue Strat is getting a pounding too after your recent ministrations.
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Yeah, take it to Jonathan-he'll see you right. For me, my old Strat was getting virtually impossible to tune , by which I mean that I'd tune to what I would normally think was fine and as soon as I fretted notes, it would sound wrong so I'd have to tune slightly sharp or flat to get it to sound reasonably in tune.
After the refret , no such problems. I was very nervous because it had had years of usage and was my oldest guitar and when I collected it afterwards from Jonathan, I was very happy to find that the guitar still felt right.
Said guitar is in pieces on my living room floor at the moment, throwing in a few mods myself. In fact I don't think the frets are quite as bad as I feared at first. Theres not much meat on them thats for sure, but I've not had any real problems.
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I've always though if it plays good and sounds good leave it be!
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I've always though if it plays good and sounds good leave it be!
Yes I had an old 80's HSS Strat with medium jumbo frets. It was getting some uneven wear and I think I got it prematurely refretted with jumbo frets and now I miss the old feel :( I think all I needed was a fret dress.