OMG....I'm a luthier now.

[Paul K]

Ladies and Gentlemen;

 

No, not really.  But a year ago I did buy an Ovation Celebrity that I never really got to be friends with.  I changed strings three times, and still cold because it wasn't the strings.  I watched some youtube videos on fret leveling and crowning, bought some cheap tools and spent two or three hours making things right.  I should have done this a long time ago, as I now have a nice guitar.  OK, so...shame on Ovation for selling such a crappy setup.  But my message is don't be afraid. 

 

Cheers,

Paul K

[KuruPrionz]

I've been a guitar tech for 45 years or so. 

Frets are where it's at!!!! Any guitar that I plan on keeping gets a LC+P = Level, Crown and Polish. 

If the frets are correct and the neck isn't warped, the guitar can play as good as anything out there. 

 

Way back when, you couldn't buy the tools that are available now so my brother and I modified existing tools. I'm used to them and the results are good so I still use them all these years later.

I have a square needle file that I carefully smoothed all of the "teeth" down to a polished steel surface on one side. I use that to round the corners of the frets. 

I have a triangular file and the edges are now all smooth. Masking tape on the fretboard between the frets protects the board from any harm and after crowning I round the frets up to the center, leaving a small "stripe" of filed fret at the peak. 

My brother came up with the idea of carefully grinding a toenail clipper to a flat surface, the blades meet in the center and are open on the sides. Very easy to sneak it up under a fret and gently lift it out of the slot. I've probably re-fretted a couple hundred guitars, at least. 

 

Congrats on making your Ovation into a nice guitar, it really doesn't take much to make things right. 

[desertbluesman]

11 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Way back when, you couldn't buy the tools that are available now so my brother and I modified existing tools. I'm used to them and the results are good so I still use them all these years later.

I bought a bunch of fret working tools from Stew Mac from years ago. I still have them to this day, buying from them from late 70's to mid 80's. I even bought the Dan Erlewine https://danerlewine.com/ Table (not the new one, the old all wood one from Stew Mac) (I sold the table to some dude just north of the Golden Gate Bridge area years ago). I have never been to a luthier since the purchase of those items.

 

I used to go to a luthier in Ocean NJ his name was Philip Petillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Petillo and he was a nice guy and let me watch what he did. Phil did Bruce Springsteen, Tal Farlow, Dave Van Ronk, and other famous guitarists. Anyways I used to watch Phil like a hawk. And learned how to do fret filing, and neck adjustments. Anyways Phil died years ago from heart problems.

[Larryz]

I've been very lucky on new guitar frets.  The Gibson Pleck system works fine for me, the other Fender, Taylor, Conti, Epiphone, etc., frets were just fine.  The only guitar I bought new that had a lousy fret set up was a Takamine and one of my MIM Fender Tele's had a little bite.  It cost me $80 bucks to have my tech straighten the Takamine out, but it was worth the trouble...the Tele wasn't that bad so I just sold it...😎

[KuruPrionz]

DBM, by the time I learned about StewMac, we had the tools we needed and I was servicing local music shops. 

At one point I was the authorized warranty repair station for Fender and Gibson. I was the first tech in Central California to install the Floyd Rose locking vibrato systems back when a custom installation was your only option. 

 

And, somewhere in one of my boxes I have enough Petillo fret wire to do a couple of guitars. I should find it, there's a build I want to use that wire on.

It was triangular instead of round so the peak was more defined and therefore more accurate. Phil made some nice guitars too!!

[desertbluesman]

3 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

And, somewhere in one of my boxes I have enough Petillo fret wire to do a couple of guitars. I should find it, there's a build I want to use that wire on.

It was triangular instead of round so the peak was more defined and therefore more accurate. Phil made some nice guitars too!!

I liked the peaked frets as well, I did buy one of Petillos first solid body electrics it was a decent guitar but the neck warped and he would not fix it, so after many more years I sold it back to his wife Lucille as a keepsake for $750 (I met Lucille when he starting his shop at his first location in Bricktown NJ, before he moved to Ocean NJ) The Petillo pictures attached It had Duncan Distortions on the ends and a DeMarzio stack in the middle. I also used that guitar for GUITAR TO MIDI.

[KuruPrionz]

3 hours ago, desertbluesman said:

I liked the peaked frets as well, I did buy one of Petillos first solid body electrics it was a decent guitar but the neck warped and he would not fix it, so after many more years I sold it back to his wife Lucille as a keepsake for $750 (I met Lucille when he starting his shop at his first location in Bricktown NJ, before he moved to Ocean NJ) The Petillo pictures attached It had Duncan Distortions on the ends and a DeMarzio stack in the middle. I also used that guitar for GUITAR TO MIDI.

That's a shame he wouldn't fix it!!!! Looks like it was a nice guitar too, sad...

[desertbluesman]

57 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

That's a shame he wouldn't fix it!!!! Looks like it was a nice guitar too, sad...

I played it for many years, it had a 25"scale shorter than Fenders and longer than Gibson's It had all of those switches so it went from thinner than a strat to fat as a Les Paul (more or less) I think I paid $1100 dollars for it way back in the day (Mid 80's) I sold it for a bit less @ $750. When I sent it back to his son and wife, the son tried to get me to refund some of the money because the neck was bent, but I refused to give the refund because Lucille wanted it as a keepsake (And as a comeuppance because Phil who refused to straighten out the neck some years before). I did file the frets way down in the center of the neck (lengthwise) so it was playable. I put that scorpion on the head stock to hide the logo, (no free advertising for a luthier who refused to fix his own mistakes).

[Caevan O’Shite]

Congratulations, Doctor K! Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

I'm a virgin to fret and nut-slot work! Now, I wouldn't be afraid to try my hand at it if I had the necessary tools, and I probably will get them and give it a go in time.

The biggest reason that I might not try it myself on the Tele neck that I bought not too long ago, is that it has a conical Compound Radius fretboard- 10"r at the nut and 1st-Fret, to 16"r at the 22nd-Fret.

I don't know as I want that to be my first attempt at fret and nut work! It's not rocket science, but I do want great results, 'done right the first time'.

I do know someone, a genuinely world-class, top-notch luthier and violin maker who is very well versed in Compound Radius fretwork and just about anything else related to such instrument crafting, starting with the tree; and I had some other tasks in mind that I wanted to enlist him to do. So, I might have him do that, or at least, solicit his advice, as I've had his stellar Compound Radius fretwork results under my fingers before and I don't know as it gets any better that that!

[KuruPrionz]

9 hours ago, Caevan OShite said:

Congratulations, Doctor K! Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

I'm a virgin to fret and nut-slot work! Now, I wouldn't be afraid to try my hand at it if I had the necessary tools, and I probably will get them and give it a go in time.

The biggest reason that I might not try it myself on the Tele neck that I bought not too long ago, is that it has a conical Compound Radius fretboard- 10"r at the nut and 1st-Fret, to 16"r at the 22nd-Fret.

I don't know as I want that to be my first attempt at fret and nut work! It's not rocket science, but I do want great results, 'done right the first time'.

I do know someone, a genuinely world-class, top-notch luthier and violin maker who is very well versed in Compound Radius fretwork and just about anything else related to such instrument crafting, starting with the tree; and I had some other tasks in mind that I wanted to enlist him to do. So, I might have him do that, or at least, solicit his advice, as I've had his stellar Compound Radius fretwork results under my fingers before and I don't know as it gets any better that that!

I use Warmoth compound radius necks, love them. I've installed a few for customers too. 

I've re-fretted at least 6 or 7 of them and leveled, crowned and polished a few more than that. I've honestly never given the compound radius any consideration whatsoever and never had any problems with any of them. I've leveled them exactly the same way that I level any other fretboard. 

Make sure your lighting allows you to see the reflections off the top of the fret wire, important. 

Start in the center and as you work out towards the sides, shift the angle of your file stroke slightly to match the increase in the width of the fretboard as it gets closer to the bridge. 

The change in radius would be considerable if you set one fret at 10 and the next at 16. In the context of first fret to the 22nd\ fret, it just isn't a "thing" at all. 

[wraub]

I am generally not hesitant to work on my guitars, but fret work is still the unexplored adventure for me. I do have a couple of guitars that could use some attention too, but I'm on the fence between risking taking them somewhere unfamiliar, or risking doing the damage myself.