new guitar vs. re-fretting

M

MesaHead

New member
it's time to showcase material, but our guitars are having a hard time keeping their intonation as you move up the neck because of fretwear. i have a les paul studio and my buddy plays an american strat.

the neck on the studio looks straight and it plays well, if i get it re-fretted, will that fix my problems?

and for my buddy with the strat, should he just buy a new neck and have it installed? it's an american strat, but it feels like a mexican when i play it.

these are both $1000 guitars, will spending $200 fix our problems or do we have to go out and finance $3000-$5000 guitars to get the perfect guitar?

thanks.
 
Have the guitars professonally looked at and set up. That would have to be some fret ware to cause intonation problems. Unless your strings are way high. Have it looked at.
 
A pro repair tech can set it up to stay and play in tune.
I have on an average 4-6 players per week that come to me for fret job.
99% of them just need a crown job. Some might need one to four frets replaced. But for the most part if you don't mind the frets a shade lower than they came out of the factory just get them leveled, crowned and polished.

Talk to a repair guy I'm sure He'll have some helpful answers.

C
 
Intonation is normally adjusted at the bridge. Badly worn frets rarely cause more than buzzing and discording in the specific areas of wear. If you don;t trust yourself to make the adjustments take your guitar to a tech and have him/her do a set up, it should cost you a few bucks but its a lot cheaper than a refret job and should correct the problem. If it dosen't, then the tech should be able to reccomend someone to make any nessassary repairs.
 
Dani Pace said:
Intonation is normally adjusted at the bridge. Badly worn frets rarely cause more than buzzing and discording in the specific areas of wear.
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Not true... badly worn frets can definitely give you intonation problems. A properly crowned fret has a very narrow point of contact with the string, while a worn, flat fret has a wide POC that extends closer to the bridge than it is supposed to.

I hate full re-frets. I think CGibson is right on: get a crown and polish, and only replace those frets that really need it, usually the "cowboy frets" (that is... frets 1, 2, and 3).

A
 
Bad intonation CAN be caused by bad frets, though a badly set bridge is more common.

As for fret wear, most of the time they just need to be dressed. When we dress frets, we level the tops of them so they are all the same height off of the fingerboard, and then reshape the crown. Make sure this is what you tech is planning to do if he says he is recrowning or dressing them, because I have heard of guys just grinding down the bad frets until they are round, and that WILL lead to buzzing. You don't want to do it yourself, but make sure your tech is good and knows what he is doing.

Some people, by the way, hate having their frets dressed, as they can feel the difference (most people can, in a side by side test), and it drives them nuts. We have customers who end up getting full refrets once or even twice a year, because they can't stand the feel of shorter frets.

As for partial refrets, they are usually a really bad idea. You end up grinding the new frets down to the level of the remaining old ones, which means you don't get the life out of the refret you would have out of all new frets, and the cost difference is not that great.

There are some repair people out there, by the way, who never dress frets. These are older guys who are so good at driving frets cleanly; they do not have to do a real dress when they refret. They can do a full refret for less than a dress. Frank Ford is an example of this. He tells me he can drive frets so well that he can do a very light leveling with 600 grit paper to get rid of the hammer marks, and then round the tops with some 600 grit backed by his fingers. I have never tried this myself, as I can not drive frets that well (I have not been doing this for 30+ years, after all), but our shop manager has done something like this a couple times (not often though). Don't let anyone under sixty do this, and only if they have been doing repair work for their whole lives. Learning to drive frets that cleanly take a LONG time, and trust me that you can not do it. I can't even do it with an arbor press, which makes it a lot easier.

But the most important thing is to take your guitars to a good repair person, and let someone with qualified eyes look at it, as it is impossible to say what you need without looking at the guitar.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Since we're on topic...

Here in KCMO, There are not many guitar repair techs. As a result, the price is high to get work done.

Tell me, my local tech, who I consider to be almost a friend, frequently gives me discounts at his shop. To replace to replace two frets and to crown and dress my Taylor 312, he will charge me $145. That would be with my good customer discount.

Is that high? It seems high. And I'm starting to get used to it.
 
I have a guy here in KY who will refret a whole fingerboard (as long as it's not bound like Les Paul Standards) for $100. It's also a friend discount, so I dont know how much it is other places. He generally charges people about $40 for a full fret dress and polish i think.

At least you're talking about a studio and not a standard. I hate when they have to refret a standard and mess up the binding. Thats one of the reasons I bought an SG Standard Limited Edition. They have everything the same as an SG standard with an unbound ebony board instead of a bound rosewood one.

H2H
 
Hard2Hear said:
I have a guy here in KY who will refret a whole fingerboard (as long as it's not bound like Les Paul Standards) for $100. It's also a friend discount, so I dont know how much it is other places. He generally charges people about $40 for a full fret dress and polish i think.
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I would never trust someone who charges that little to do a professonal job. They can not make a living doing a professional job for those prices, and if they can make a living doing it for those prices they are doing a horse shit job. If they are just doing it as a hobby, then they do not have the experience to do it right.

End of story.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Like I said...he charges ME that much. He did a Strat for me and it was just great. I have no idea how much his shop charges to do it for people, I'm sure the prices get trumped up like everything else. I've thrown him some gear his way and recorded a demo for his band for next to nothing, so I'm sure he's just returning the favor.

H2H
 
thanks for the input guys. (no not that kind of input!)

i'm liking the complete refret idea for the les paul.

we rented two tele's for the last show. we (I) spent about an hour trying out all of the rental guitars in the store until we found some that were up to par. the tele's were the only guitars that would keep their intonation and i moved chords up the neck. i played three different gibsons right out of the box, including a 3000$ custom. yes i know that they are not perfect 'out of the box', but not even the one's on the wall would work. they all lost their intonation by the 9th fret, especially on the high strings. aswell, the strats we tried had the same problem, but to a lesser degree. the tele's realy impressed me and now my bandmates are strongly 'suggesting' that we buy the tele's. it seems rather easy for a vocalist that only has to worry about purchasing a $400 mic to recommend that other band mates spend thousands. fortunately the one i rented was 950$, the one my counterpart rented was 1750$. :D
 
MesaHead said:
thanks for the input guys. (no not that kind of input!)

i'm liking the complete refret idea for the les paul.

we rented two tele's for the last show. we (I) spent about an hour trying out all of the rental guitars in the store until we found some that were up to par. the tele's were the only guitars that would keep their intonation and i moved chords up the neck. i played three different gibsons right out of the box, including a 3000$ custom. yes i know that they are not perfect 'out of the box', but not even the one's on the wall would work. they all lost their intonation by the 9th fret, especially on the high strings. aswell, the strats we tried had the same problem, but to a lesser degree. the tele's realy impressed me and now my bandmates are strongly 'suggesting' that we buy the tele's. it seems rather easy for a vocalist that only has to worry about purchasing a $400 mic to recommend that other band mates spend thousands. fortunately the one i rented was 950$, the one my counterpart rented was 1750$. :D
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Any of those guitars can be made to play in tune. They just need to be setup, but EVER guitar you buy new is going to need setup. That is just the way factories work.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
I had a guy in the crowd throw a beer bottle at my guitar and it knocked the darn fret right off the guitar! I shoulda gawt that dern beer bawdle arn whipped it back innew da crowd! Thayt wudda lerned em!
 
AdrianFly said:
I had a guy in the crowd throw a beer bottle at my guitar and it knocked the darn fret right off the guitar! I shoulda gawt that dern beer bawdle arn whipped it back innew da crowd! Thayt wudda lerned em!
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I would've killed him!!!
 
Hey anybody know a good tech in the DC metro area, preferably in VA? Normally I do my own work, but a friend has a twenty year old guitar with frets that are way bad. That's far beyond me.

Any help?
 
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