Tommygun wrote:
I was under the illusion that it was just a simple case of sanding down the frets until they were even.
Unfortunately not. A few other things to take into account:
- The fret crowns are rounded and when you level them, you end up with them flat so you have to round them off again one by one, a process called "crowning"
- the fingerboard is not flat, but radiused
- you have to slack off the truss rod completely and allow it to settle before dressing - otherwise the neck humps in the middle when the strings are off and you level that out and end up with too much relief when you restring
- when you level you need to add in fallaway from the 12th or 14th fret or so
- Once the frets are dressed, the nut slots need filing down lower to bring the strings down to the correct height
Is there anyone out there who has tried to do this work themselves ?
It's possible to do yourself, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's not a simple job and you need to read up a lot before you tackle it. As a general guide, if you don't know what relief, bow, hump, fallaway, radius or any of the other terms I've used mean, or how to adjust a truss rod your chances of success are slim. My first fret dress was done with no knowledge and ended up a complete failure (so ended up as my second and third fret dress too and finally as my first refret ?). So I bought a book (those paper things we used before the Internet) on fret jobs and practised. Only by my fourth dress was I able to do a decent job.
