Tweet
It turns out that the 2009 PRS SE Custom Semi-hollow with the very worn frets that I had asked about in June had enough metal left after leveling for recrowning. The frets are not very tall but the guitar is very playable.
I had been unable to use either of my recrown tools on the leveled frets above the 12th fret since they were almost full width "railroad tracks". It really looked like there was not enough metal left to make it play decently. But I had just leveled and recrowned my SE Singlecut last week which had a lot of fret wear so I figured that I would give this one another shot.
What worked for me tonight was the $20 diamond grit block which I had recommended earlier before I figured out how to use the $40 StewMac fret file and the $25 cylindrical diamond grit recrown tool from Amazon. One problem with the little blocks was that without some sort of holder the sharp corners would really dig into your fingers until it got quite painful. I was going to design some sort of holder for them but I tried using 5 inch curved jaw Vise Grips and it worked perfectly. With the 200 grit block I was able to reshape the frets enough to use my StewMac fret file.
I am sure that experts here could have reshaped the frets with a triangular file (or whatever) but I am still taking Fretology 101...
So far I have put in about 120 hours working on my guitars, leveling the frets and recrowning them so its not like I'm a complete amateur just spouting crap I read on the internet. I've learned a lot from my mistakes... "Better not do THAT again!" Plus all of the great advice I've received here which usually doesn't sink in until I screw up and think to myself "so THAT is what they were talking about!"
I've been very pleased with the fret leveling because I've always had to have a slight bow in the neck to handle all of the bending I do. If I tried lowering the action the strings would get choked by the higher frets so I would have to raise the action back up which for one thing made it harder to play chords comfortably. After doing the basic fret leveling, ramping and crowning I would use a Sharpie to mark the areas on the frets which would choke the bent strings. If there were just a few I might just shove the Sharpie under the strings to raise them enough for me to get my sandboards in. If there are a lot of "choke points" I will loosen the strings and tape them out of the way so I can do a little more ramping in the trouble area.
I'm sure that other guitarists have their own idea of a perfect fret job and I encourage them to get some basic tools for leveling and "tweaking" their own fretboards. Start off with a guitar that you don't value very highly and see if you can make it play better.
I better sign off as I am still all wired up after fixing my 2009 SE Custom Semi-hollow...
Steve A.
P.S. One other thing I've been doing is making sure that the plain strings ring out clearly from the 12th up to the top fret. Not just eliminating buzzes but making sure that the notes ring out. And I am impressed how easy it is to play chords (my Achilles heel!) I used to have to press down hard but now its like the guitar is doing all of the work and I'm just kicking back...
I had been unable to use either of my recrown tools on the leveled frets above the 12th fret since they were almost full width "railroad tracks". It really looked like there was not enough metal left to make it play decently. But I had just leveled and recrowned my SE Singlecut last week which had a lot of fret wear so I figured that I would give this one another shot.
What worked for me tonight was the $20 diamond grit block which I had recommended earlier before I figured out how to use the $40 StewMac fret file and the $25 cylindrical diamond grit recrown tool from Amazon. One problem with the little blocks was that without some sort of holder the sharp corners would really dig into your fingers until it got quite painful. I was going to design some sort of holder for them but I tried using 5 inch curved jaw Vise Grips and it worked perfectly. With the 200 grit block I was able to reshape the frets enough to use my StewMac fret file.
I am sure that experts here could have reshaped the frets with a triangular file (or whatever) but I am still taking Fretology 101...
So far I have put in about 120 hours working on my guitars, leveling the frets and recrowning them so its not like I'm a complete amateur just spouting crap I read on the internet. I've learned a lot from my mistakes... "Better not do THAT again!" Plus all of the great advice I've received here which usually doesn't sink in until I screw up and think to myself "so THAT is what they were talking about!"I've been very pleased with the fret leveling because I've always had to have a slight bow in the neck to handle all of the bending I do. If I tried lowering the action the strings would get choked by the higher frets so I would have to raise the action back up which for one thing made it harder to play chords comfortably. After doing the basic fret leveling, ramping and crowning I would use a Sharpie to mark the areas on the frets which would choke the bent strings. If there were just a few I might just shove the Sharpie under the strings to raise them enough for me to get my sandboards in. If there are a lot of "choke points" I will loosen the strings and tape them out of the way so I can do a little more ramping in the trouble area.
I'm sure that other guitarists have their own idea of a perfect fret job and I encourage them to get some basic tools for leveling and "tweaking" their own fretboards. Start off with a guitar that you don't value very highly and see if you can make it play better.
I better sign off as I am still all wired up after fixing my 2009 SE Custom Semi-hollow...
Steve A.
P.S. One other thing I've been doing is making sure that the plain strings ring out clearly from the 12th up to the top fret. Not just eliminating buzzes but making sure that the notes ring out. And I am impressed how easy it is to play chords (my Achilles heel!) I used to have to press down hard but now its like the guitar is doing all of the work and I'm just kicking back...
So I used the 16" block and rotated it back and forth. (I had tried printing out the PDF file with neck radiuses before placing the order but the scale was way off. Give me a JPG file that I can manually resize, Mr. Pick Guardian! 
)n-SiwiBR1sykUCTw~~60_1.JPG)
Comment