Manchester Guitar Tech
This guitar is a long-term test guitar for a UK magazine. It was dropped on its face, suffering some damage from the plain strings to frets 17 and 18. A couple of higher frets were also lightly marked but this was damage which would dress out easily. As you can see below, the damage wasn’t bad …
I covered fret dressing in this earlier post but will repeat the steps here for completeness. The pictures should tell the story but I’ll add some text where I think it’s necessary to explain further. The first job, before the frets can be leveled is to remove the lacquer from them. The easiest way to do …
I thought I’d demonstrate fretting a neck and finishing it with nitrocellulose lacquer. The neck I used was very nicely made, with a compound radius fretboard which progresses up the board from 7¼” to 10″ radius. The back is a nice soft V at the first fret, rounding out towards the heel. A compound radius isn’t …
Last week I refretted this maple board Stratocaster with huge wire – 0.057″ high. I removed the old frets, left the finish intact and laid the new frets onto the strips bare wood that were exposed. I used Sintoms fretwire which was an absolute pleasure to work with. It held the slot tightly and the …
A customer brought me his 2011 PRS Special complaining that notes did not ring out and saying that he thought that the frets were uneven. It’s quite unusual for a brand new PRS to have fret problems so I took a look and sure enough, several frets were low around the 12th fret. You can …
Before doing any levelling, you need to be sure that you are working with a straight neck. I’m using a Stewart MacDonald notched straightedge which allows me to read the fretboard. I adjusted the trussrod until the fretboard was flat. I have marked the top of each fret with a marker pen. This is so …
The Squier Vista Series Jagmaster is one of my favourite guitars. The Squier Vista series was made in Japan to very high standards and comprised around 4 models. If you are going to do this remember that rosewood dust can be an irritant so wear a dust mask when sanding and cutting it. This Jagmaster …