Guitar setup tips

[Steve A.]

Over the years I have discovered that neck-body joint type and fitting tolerances made an audible difference in the non-amplified sound of the string sustain.

Yes! I would always pick out a guitar that had a really nice sound acoustically. If it didn't have that sound you could spend hundreds of dollars on pickups and other upgrades and it still wouldn't sound good.

The best playing guitars I bought in the 80's and 90's were used ones that had been set up professionally. I never knew exactly what that involved but I see now that fret leveling and recrowning is a big part of it (since I got my $40 fret leveling kit!)

Steve

[Slobrain]

Do what my friend Felix does- extend the fret channel right through the binding. He is blind but he has done at least 100 refret jobs- mainly on his own guitars, sanding down the fretboard for a wider radius and doing it all by touch. His girlfriend does help with hammering the frets in but he does the rest. His guitars have very low action- he doesn't care much for any guitar that he hasn't refretted himself. (His guitar playing is fucking incredible- think Eric Johnson but with a better grasp of blues...)

Steve

P.S. He might do some bound necks the right way- I was thinking of an Agile LP that he refretted...

Hey Steve,

you mean he flattened the radius of the neck to get better string bending without fretouts. That's the same reason I have changed some of my strat necks from 9.5 to 12 inch for a lower action without fret out on bends. I do like a 9.5 radius for chording and feel that Warmoths 10 to 16 inch compound radius feels great. I see that some other guitar manufacturers out there are now doing the compound radius with their guitars the last 10 years or so. Good for them, the compound radius is a great playing feel.

Man, you really got some guys pointing out some good info on refrets here. Go look at as many YouTube videos and don't be afraid to do the refret, just be patient and take your time. You can do this. before I ever refretted a neck I had done many many mods and strat style guitar builds over the years and then a buddy refretted one of those Chibson Les Paul's because he didn't like the crappy fretting that it had. Once he did it he told me to give it a shot... I said what the heck and after my first refret, I was really glad to started doing them. Now its just getting an idea what each neck needs and taking my time to get each part done.

Each part of a refret has a technique so watch as many videos you can end see each part of the refret technique to learn from. Who knows, maybe one day you will be doing them for a living...

Slo

[Steve A.]

Do what my friend Felix does- extend the fret channel right through the binding. He is blind but he has done at least 100 refret jobs- mainly on his own guitars, sanding down the fretboard for a wider radius and doing it all by touch. His girlfriend does help with hammering the frets in but he does the rest. His guitars have very low action- he doesn't care much for any guitar that he hasn't refretted himself. (His guitar playing is fucking incredible- think Eric Johnson but with a better grasp of blues...)

Here's a video of Felix so you can check out his playing- and the fret job he did on his red strat about one minute and 45 seconds into the video.

Enjoy!

Steve

[Steve A.]

Each part of a refret has a technique so watch as many videos you can end see each part of the refret technique to learn from. Who knows, maybe one day you will be doing them for a living...

Actually right now I'm thinking more of all the guitarists I know who need fret leveling. Its usually about $95 around here for a setup that includes leveling (if it needs a refret I will pass on that.) I have a whole shitload of guitars that undoubtedly need fret leveling and recrowning- I'm waiting for more tools to arrive.I am sure that the work on my older guitars will be much more involved than tapping in a few frets as I have been doing on my new guitars.

Yes, there is certainly a whole lot of good tips from the people on this thread. Even the guitar tech down at the local GC gave me some tips, like putting blue masking tape on either side of a fret you are pulling out to help keep the wood from splintering.

Thanks!

Steve

[Steve A.]

Bound necks

I don't know how they are doing this in Asia but my Vietnamese ESP/LTD EC-256 has a bound neck and body and sells for $250-300. The Squire Classic Vibe 60's Tele Custom made in Indonesia has a bound neck and body and sells for around $350. And they look sharp.

While customers say "Wow!" this thread brings up a good point- refretting these guitars might cost more than they are worth.

[Slobrain]

Mitch! Good to see you old man.

My suggestion to the OP is to pickup a few cheap necks from Guitarfetish to practice on.

Hey Joe,

Good to hear from you too. I hope your in the process of a new awesome amp build. I tell buddies about some of the stuff you did back on Ampage. I sure miss Ampage, what a cool place that was.

Actually its Steve A. about to get his feet wet in the world of refretting. I've been doing it for a few years now myself. I'm trying to talk Steve into building the tools he needs. He's about to embark on refretting a PRS.

Here is one of my refrets, I changed the radius from a 9.5 to a 12 inch and put in the Jescar super jumbo frets for more finger control... It plays so much better now, plus the jumbo frets give the neck a bit of a beefier sound too.

Yep, I used the Squier indo made necks to learn on before I did other better necks. Surprisingly the Squier Indo made strat necks came out playing really well after the refrets. probably cheap wood but the truss rod in them is ok...



T-Boy, please bring back Ampage...

[JoeM]

I don't know how they are doing this in Asia but my Vietnamese ESP/LTD EC-256 has a bound neck and body and sells for $250-300. The Squire Classic Vibe 60's Tele Custom made in Indonesia has a bound neck and body and sells for around $350. And they look sharp.

Steve, I have a squier classic vibe 60s Tele Custom, but it says crafted in China, bound body, but not a bound fingerboard. Really well made guitar. Where did you see one with a bound FB?

[Rick Turner]

There is a certain amount of fuzzy brain when dealing with Bay Area guitarists of the '60s and early '70s!

I have one of the three "Super Bear" black faced Princeton Reverbs modded by Owsley Stanley, aka "Bear", and Barry at one point thought his Princeton was one of them. It's not. Bear beefed up the power supply a bit, added a "mid" control as per Showman front end, and put in a JBL D-120. The little thing kicks some serious ass, but it wasn't gutted and completely rebuilt as per Randall's early Princeton make-overs.

The guy who is still around who really knows the Prune Music story is Larry Cragg, a great luthier/muso/guitar and amp collector/rental service still working in Marin in San Anselmo.

[JoeM]

Rick, I think your last post was meant for the other thread?: (Regarding Mesa, Randall Smith)

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t36655/#post350602

[Steve A.]

Steve, I have a squier classic vibe 60s Tele Custom, but it says crafted in China, bound body, but not a bound fingerboard. Really well made guitar. Where did you see one with a bound FB?

In my dreams? Rather than figure out which gig bag I put it in I will take your word for it.
(Yes, my memory has gotten really bad as a result of having bumped my head against beams and pipes in crowded attics too many times. But hey it's not all bad- half of the things I forget were probably bad anyway- right? )
What I do remember is that it is a really nice guitar for the price ($379 a few years ago) and that SamAsh sent me two guitars with the same invoice number so I probably could have kept the second one but I sent it back to them. It's been apart for a few years now waiting for me to put in my set of Antiquity I's from another guitar.

Steve

[Steve A.]

I've been trying to figure out how LTD can sell guitars made in Vietnam with bound bodies and fretboards for $250-300. It seems like the factories in Asia have new techniques to apply the binding- I have a hunch that it is pre-cut to fit since all of the bodies are identical. As for the bound fretboards my guess is that they are bound just like binding on the bodies- but they are using frets cut exactly to the required dimensions so that they are pressed in very easily.

They might have a run of 500 necks all of which are identical so that would be one way to crank them out very cheaply. If you have workers measuring and cutting frets and fret tangs it would slow down the assembly line. And I think that having the binding makes it easier since the frets can't slide back and forth. I would further guess that the fret ends have already been tapered- they press the frets in, make sure they are all level and voila! the fretboard is done. (If they were filing the fret ends on the neck I think it would have left marks on the binding.)

So I actually might try refretting one of six LTD EC-256's that I own (I did mention that I have OCD- right?) The first 3 I got had P-90 stacked pickups which sounded like total crap but that was cool because the pickup cavities could accommodate practically any other P-90 mount pickup without having to rout it out. I put DiM virtual P-90's in one, boutique-style P-90's in another and the third one is going to have boutique-style P-90's with a dummy coil.

Once I pull out the 22 frets I could try to duplicate them exactly with radiused 6130 fretwire and theoretically they would all go right in. (What would be time-consuming would be "cloning" the 22 frets but I could do a few at a time for a couple of weeks until they were all done.) I would call it my "color-by-number" refret job. Of course it is possible that the removed frets would be too mangled up to make heads or tails of them.

Yikes- its past my bedtime and my computer keyboard will turn into a pumpk.......

[John_H]

...Once I pull out the 22 frets I could try to duplicate them exactly with radiused 6130 fretwire and theoretically they would all go right in. (What would be time-consuming would be "cloning" the 22 frets but I could do a few at a time for a couple of weeks until they were all done.) I would call it my "color-by-number" refret job. Of course it is possible that the removed frets would be too mangled up to make heads or tails of them.

Trying to cut the frets to the exact length would be a waste of time. The fret ends should be all "dressed" at the same time for consistency.
You're getting some great advice here from many sources, but I think it's over-complicating the issue. Yes, it's tricky at times, and tedious as well, but anyone who has some tool skill, and can pay attention to detail should be able to succeed. There are dozens of tools available to make things easier, but it still comes down to basic craftsmanship, and that boils down to natural skill, and practice. You should get a neck to experiment with, and start with the most basic of tools. If you learn by relying only on skill, and technique, You'll do better work in the long run because you'll only use the other specialty tools as intended. As time saver's, not as a crutch.

[Steve A.]

Trying to cut the frets to the exact length would be a waste of time. The fret ends should be all "dressed" at the same time for consistency.

John: That was a "think" piece I just posted- wondering how they are installing frets in bound necks in the factories in Asia in guitars selling for as low a $250. For a "real" refret job (as planned for the PRS SE Semi-Hollow) I will be following all of the great advice posted here.

Right now my main interest is going through my collection of 40 or 50 guitars and checking the necks and doing fret leveling as needed. Before refretting the PRS I'll probably try lowering the frets in one of my LTD EC-256's from .053 to .036.

Thanks for all of the tips!

Steve Ahola

P.S. Asian factories especially in China are reinventing a lot of the manufacturing processes, looking at the end product and coming up with cost effective methods to achieve the same results.

[Joe L]

Hey Joe,

Good to hear from you too. I hope your in the process of a new awesome amp build. I tell buddies about some of the stuff you did back on Ampage. I sure miss Ampage, what a cool place that was.

Those were definitely the dawning days of the clone explosion! And yes, I'm retired now and with all the extra time I have, the projects have multiplied. I'm doing an OD3 from the SLOclone forum with midi controlled BF clean/2203 Crunch/Friedman Lead channels which is nearing completion. Also have an Ampclones Mesa Mark IIC+ mostly done, a 36watt - 18 watt Marshall with EF86+TMB preamps, a 1959 modded to a Mojave Scorpion circuit, my old 4212 combo that was my first SLO prototype is now a 2558 completed as of last week (I still have two tube sockets and the clean channel controls to build a discreet clean channel), an SLO Lead channel rack mount preamp and I'm outfitting a 2203 chassis/power amp with an open preamp section board for prototyping stuff.

So, is that awesome enough?

[Slobrain]

Those were definitely the dawning days of the clone explosion! And yes, I'm retired now and with all the extra time I have, the projects have multiplied. I'm doing an OD3 from the SLOclone forum with midi controlled BF clean/2203 Crunch/Friedman Lead channels which is nearing completion. Also have an Ampclones Mesa Mark IIC+ mostly done, a 36watt - 18 watt Marshall with EF86+TMB preamps, a 1959 modded to a Mojave Scorpion circuit, my old 4212 combo that was my first SLO prototype is now a 2558 completed as of last week (I still have two tube sockets and the clean channel controls to build a discreet clean channel), an SLO Lead channel rack mount preamp and I'm outfitting a 2203 chassis/power amp with an open preamp section board for prototyping stuff.

So, is that awesome enough?

yep, I would say so... That's a lot of irons in the fire but sounds like all good ones. I'm not working now due to outsourcing from the hospital I worked at. They let the whole network group go, then brought in contractors... The wave of new corporate America...

Post pics and sound clips here on the projects, I'm betting they will be killer sounding.