Levelling frets

[muttley600]

Does that fret pressing tool that you can buy to put in your drill press work?

Yes but they are far from essential. If you going to do a lot of fret work then an arbour press would be a better option. They are no good for acoustics above the 10 fret however.

I have a modified set of mole grips which I can switch out the clamp heads. Similar to the Jaws system stewmac sells. I still rarely use anything but a block, pin/toffee hammer and some care. I actually still enjoy fretting even after 20 plus years.

 

[cephus]

The shop guy said the neck was pretty much a write off. In his opinion, there ain't a whole lotta meat left on the worn ones.

I know the neck is functional. I used it for several years ont he jambolin. I had intended to put the kramer neck back in the right place so I could quickly get a floyd guitar up and running. I did and now it looks like the floyd is worth installing on another guitar.

As far as levelling goes, one of the biggest contributor to the difference in wear is that my clown guitar that I used the neck on for so many years joins the body at something very conservative like the 15th fret. I can't even really reach those higher frets because there is no cutaway.

I am thinking that I can rather forgivingly take some height off the frets that I can't reach anyway so that I can get the 7th fret on the G string to work again at least.

The neck feels nice to me, but evidently I am a terrible judge of guitar harware. This guy told me that it had a twist. Since it's arguably garbage, there is not really anything to loose from going at it with sandpaper, scotchbrite, files or dremel, especially if I can contain the damage to those higher frets.

 

[Light]

Does that fret pressing tool that you can buy to put in your drill press work?

I like it, but only for new fingerboards which haven't been glued to the fingerboard yet. You have to be careful with it though, because if the radius of the caul doesn't match up perfectly with the fingerboards radius, the fret doesn't seat perfectly - i.e., if their is too much curve to the caul, the frets will be a little high in the middle. It is, strangely, not that big of a deal, because they are still in quite solidly, but it's not right, so you need to take care of it somehow.

Also, I'm with Muttley, the arbor press version is much preferable. That's not what the drill press is designed to do, so it doesn't do it very well. An arbor press, however, IS designed to do essentially this job, so it works very well.


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"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Light]

If I convert this into a locking hard tail, would that eliminate the majority of the hassle inherent to floyds?

A little better, but not all that much. The problem is as much to do with setting the intonation on a Floyd (which is a pain) as anything else. Even with the little tool for doing it, it's a pain in the ass.



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"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi