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Hey! I have a friend who builds flat tops who wants to give stainless a try. I have done a handful of refrets and he was asking advice. He is using a compound radius from 14” to 20”. Jeskar sells the coils and they come in 10”. I have only done installs where the wire matches the board precisely. I bought pre cut pre radius bags for these re frets. Has anyone worked on a compound radius. Do you radius each fret on a bender or can you get…

Santa heard I had a challenging year so he got me a 3d printer for Christmas. I’ve been printing like crazy, learning the machine. This has resulted in a bunch of tools that either don’t work for me, were attempts at mixing colors, or have very minor printing blemishes. Two lots up for grabs to anyone in the US who wants either. I’ll mail to you for free. First one to claim each gets it :) First lot has parametric nut and saddle sanders…

Hey everyone, I have a Vaccaro bass guitar and I'm getting a lot of open note buzz on it. In truth, the bass could stand a refret but that may or may not be in the cards. Additionally, the truss rod nut is stripped. I'm also wondering if this nut is designed to come out? I imagine it is but it's kind of funky. A 1/4" Allen wrench is still too small to grip it. So the questions: 1. How would you deal with the zero fret and the nut? The st…

I am working on a wall hanger that I thought would be fun to get working. It is an old Tokai. I have repaired a crack on left tuning arm. Also removed the bridge that had been badly glued on by previous owner. I am deciding if I want to put the effort into re-fretting it. I am new to Classical guitar actions, so my question is this - when you put a straight edge on the neck, where should it hit the bridge, if at all? I have learn…

A customer brought this Gibson songwriter deluxe in, it’s approximately 20 years old to his recollection. It needs a few things done including fret work and a bridge re glue. At some point the guitar was lent out to a friend who dropped it then tried to fix the finish themselves. It looks like they used some kind of cleaner or something that didn’t get along with the lacquer at all. I’ll attach pictures but it’s kinda hard to get a pic…

Hello everyone, I use a Stewmac japanese fretsaw (which produces .023" wide fretslots, matching the width of the tang of stewmac wire) to recut my slots on refrets. The saw does a good job making the slots deeper, but struggles to make them wider and binds like crazy throughout the process. I think that is due to it not having enough (or any) set, so in theory it only cut downwards and does a poor job removing material from the slot wall…

Looking for some guidance here – I have a 1973 Jazz Bass with maple fretboard and fretboard binding in for a re-fret. The finish is of course built up thick and crackly along the frets, and although they’re not seated too nicely, the first few came out really tough and chippy even after scoring the finish really well. I’m aware that Fenders were fretted sideways until 1982, but because of the binding, pushing them out sideways is not an…

So I’ve finally gotten around to hammering a couple frets in after sawing the slot. There is the tiniest gap between the fret and fingerboard is this normal or did I not saw enough. I think you would like the fret to be completely flush right? You can barely fit a piece of paper under there. How much leeway is there to this? Also I will be using CA glue.

This is a Kamouraska classical guitar, model 111, made in Canada in 1979. Internet information says it was made in La Patrie, Quebec, and later the line became La Patrie guitars. It looks like someone has been into this one before as the dovetail fit was poor, the gluing is very sloppy, and there are some rough chisel marks on the face of the heel. Note that if you drilled holes at the 13th fret you would miss the pocket by a few mm. Th…

I got some chips due to pulling the frets. Does anyone have any tips for fixing this?

I work in guitar repair for over 20 years and this strange buzz happen only 3 times and i really going crazy. Five years ago a all parts strat neck in G string, change string, leveling frets twice thinking i made a mistake, in some point i made a rudimentar neck jig to tried to repair that neck. Work in that guitar for 3 weeks and string heigth like 3.5mm and yeat, buzzing with not so hard picking just the G, even in other tuning like F…

Do you prefer the regular SM Fret Saw or the Japanese one they offer? Thx!

I have a Yamaha Classical on my bench that's giving me a run for my money with a mystery intonation issue. All but the B string are perfectly intonated with the usual compensations we see. The B string however is almost an entire 1/2 step off (sharp) at the 12th. Right from the get go the scale starts going sharp incrementally at every fret. I can find the fundamental harmonic on that string but it's sitting halfway between the 11th and…

when setting up acoustic guitars, from time to time I have a lot of trouble with getting the G string to ring true when fretted. Starting from lower frets and at its worst at about the 5/6th fret, the G string buzzes when plucked "heavily" (when no other string does so)...most recently a Taylor 724 which had a neck adjustment to reduce action (to 5/64-4/64), relief about 0.003 or 0.004. Increasing relief to about 8-9 helps somewhat.…

Ok, I'm a new builder and I've only done solidbody electrics so far, so this question is related to only those. In my opinion, these are the things that have the most impact on tone, listed in order from most influential to least. Have at it! Pickup/electronics, neck joint type, neck construction (including fret size/material), scale length, bridge type, bridge saddle material, tone wood Of course, this only takes into account the guitar.…

I've only built a handful of necks and most of them have been roasted maple fretboards. This time around I am using a beautiful and incredibly stiff/hard piece of ebony. I am doing a light hammering in of the frets to get them seated and then using the hand-held vice clamps from Stewmac with the correct fretboard radius to push them down evenly the rest of the way. This process works just fine on roasted maple. It's just a softer wood t…

Hi Everyone,I hope you’re having a great weekend! Can anyone help diagnose my mystery B string buzz? I tried to attach a video but the site won't take it. I’ve tightened all hardware and the b string is not hitting any frets. I’m giving it a set-up and when I had to lower the nut slot height of the B string it improved a bit. When I capo at the first fret the buzz disappears so it seems to be something going on at the nut. …

A customer brought me a new Hummingbird with fret buzz a few weeks ago. After performing what may be the best levelling job I've ever done, the buzz was reduced, but still noticeable, though it sounded different than normal fret buzz. When I noticed that the sound was worst when playing F2 (on the A string or D string), I did a frequency analysis and discovered that the main top resonance was at 163.9 hz, and it all made sense. Those…