At what point do you either have a fret dressing done or do it yourself? How much wear before it's worthwhile? I know you don't want to do it too soon as it will wear the frets down some and bring you closer to needing a refret. On my main guitar there are a number of flat spots where I play more regularly and a smaller number of small grooves.
Anybody tackle this themselves? Is it worth the hassle of doing it yourself?
Any advice? Thanks.
Pop music is about stealing pocket money from children. - Ian Anderson
I found a few google links - One interesting site - http://www.richbeckguitars.com/FretGuide.htm
I actually need to knock the sharp edges off the sides of my new Ibanez frets; I find that my fingers "catch" on them. I wish the manufactures would do that at the factory! I was gonna buy a set of fret dressing tools, but haven't got around to it yet.
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Fretting_supplies/Fretting_tools:_Fret_dressing,_polishing.html
Generally, it's a matter of personal preference. However, I'd say that when the fret condition starts causing problems like throwing off intonation at certain spots, causing some strings to fret out at certain spots, etc etc then a fret leveling/redressing is in order.
As for doing it yourself, I wouldn't attempt it until I'd had the opportunity to have an experienced luthier show me what and what NOT to do, as it's entirely too easy to ruin frets, possibly even the neck itself, and cost you a bundle to get fixed.
Cheers!
Strat
+1 to what stratman said. the only guitar of mine I'd even risk it on is my cheap little Encore beginners guitar that I'm using to practise modding on. and I'd only risk it on that as I have plenty other better guitars in case things go wrong. in my experience, fretwork is the hardest part of guitar-modding/repair work there is.
Thanks. I don't really want to do it myself but if it was one of those things that's not too hard and reasonably expensive then maybe I should. Looks like it isn't but I wanted to get some confirmation on that. At one point doing setups looked like it was too hard for me to do but it turns out not to be.
Pop music is about stealing pocket money from children. - Ian Anderson
Same here, lol. What you need to do is this....keep an eye out for skips, people's trash, pawn shops, etc, and hopefully find a guitar thats been chucked out or can be bought for a few dollars. grab it, and use that to learn how to do fret work on it. if you mess up, well, it was only gonna get dumped anyway. the condition of the guitar is pretty irrelevant,, so long as you can work on the frets. though, of course, a playable guitar would help you assess how well you've learned the skill.
