Another 25 year old sabre. Turned out great, but I need to work out a better fret polish system. I am polishing with white scotchbrite, followed by the dremel buffing wheel. Its shiny but still a little cloudy. I want to see my reflection! Will order some finer grades of paper, maybe experiment with a different compound. I think the polishing compound I'm using is somwhere around 2000# or 0000 steel wool, could be finer.
Some lessons learned on this guitar.
1) When I level a floyd guitar, I keep the strings on the bridge so I can quickly re install it and see if everything is perfect. This time there were a couple spots with tingles that I didn't understand, that the straight edge showed were perfect, yet I was getting noise. I was pretty glum that it wasn't perfect, but desided to do the fret dress anyway. It turns out that OLD STRINGS can cause noise, either because they are bent, or because they have worn down and sit lower on the frets. Changing the strings after the fret dress, the problems areas went away! I was kinda shocked. We are talking low action, but not super low (< 1.4mm high E, 1.5mm low E).
2) I tested a few polishing and swirl removers. They are all different cutting strength, they don't tell you how strong. The one that is cheap and works well in picture below, $6 at Walmart. This compound has enough action to remove swirls and hazing with hand application, can also remove scratches if you put some elbow into it. If you go to something with stonger cutting than this you have created a ton of work for yourself. This stuff is perfect to erase playing and handling marks and light scratches.
3) After the level, I worked the nut down to lowest possible level. Best way to do this is tighten the truss a turn beyond, file down the nut slot til you get some tingling, then when you relax the truss, everything is perfect. This is a painstaking process but its worth it.
A low nut is the final frontier for shred accuracy. I've had some guitars plekked and its kinda pointless if they don't do the nut (which they never do.)
Now that this guitar is playing at god tier, it needs new pickups. It no longer feels like a backup guitar.

Some lessons learned on this guitar.
1) When I level a floyd guitar, I keep the strings on the bridge so I can quickly re install it and see if everything is perfect. This time there were a couple spots with tingles that I didn't understand, that the straight edge showed were perfect, yet I was getting noise. I was pretty glum that it wasn't perfect, but desided to do the fret dress anyway. It turns out that OLD STRINGS can cause noise, either because they are bent, or because they have worn down and sit lower on the frets. Changing the strings after the fret dress, the problems areas went away! I was kinda shocked. We are talking low action, but not super low (< 1.4mm high E, 1.5mm low E).
2) I tested a few polishing and swirl removers. They are all different cutting strength, they don't tell you how strong. The one that is cheap and works well in picture below, $6 at Walmart. This compound has enough action to remove swirls and hazing with hand application, can also remove scratches if you put some elbow into it. If you go to something with stonger cutting than this you have created a ton of work for yourself. This stuff is perfect to erase playing and handling marks and light scratches.
3) After the level, I worked the nut down to lowest possible level. Best way to do this is tighten the truss a turn beyond, file down the nut slot til you get some tingling, then when you relax the truss, everything is perfect. This is a painstaking process but its worth it.
A low nut is the final frontier for shred accuracy. I've had some guitars plekked and its kinda pointless if they don't do the nut (which they never do.)
Now that this guitar is playing at god tier, it needs new pickups. It no longer feels like a backup guitar.
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