My Westbury Standard guitar had obviously had lots of heavy use by it's previous
owner. The frets were in an awful state. I could not get it to stay in tune and
setting intonation was impossible. It had been nearly 25 years since I last
fretted a guitar, but I thought this one was worth the effort. I was right.
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The Damage |
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Look at the grooves in those top frets. No wonder the intonation is awfull |
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Off with the old |
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The old frets were removed by heating with a big soldering iron, then carefully pullin gout with a pair of end cutters |
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Clean up the slots. |
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The fret slots look a mess here, but it only took a light sanding of the board and running a scalpel in the slots to clean tehm up nicely. |
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On with the new |
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The new fret wire has been cut to a couple of mm over length and bent to radius before beeing firmly hammered home |
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Masking up |
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Before the frets can be filed to length the surronding bodywork is masked off. |
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Ready to play. |
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With the ends of the frets nicely profiled and rubbed smooth the guitar is playable |
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No more Grooves. |
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Compare this with the first photograph. Deep frets with no grooves. |
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Close up of the dusty end |
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As it turned out the frets did not need to be levelled with a stone. I was able to get a nice low action anyway. |
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All done. |
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I was able to easily tune and set the intonation. it stays in tune as well! |
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Wired Wood
Guitars
