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I'm in L.A. too, born and raised. I know Neely. Actually, I had him do a warranty pickup replacement on my near new Les Paul Standard back in 2004. He replaced the nickel covered original with a chrome covered one. Stood out like a sore thumb once I realized it. Inspired me to dig out the original and open it up, before driving back nearly to West Hollywood. Turns out the internal coil wire that solders to the pickup baseplate had come undone. Resoldered it, put the cover back on, and put the original pickup back in, where it still sits.
So, instead of doing a simple diagnosis and quick fix, he just replaced the component. The way my mind works, and coming from a high tech mechanical background myself (mechanical operator on nuclear power plants), that's not a good way of handling a repair problem. You surgically diagnose a problem, or at lest attempt to, before just taking the shotgun approach and throwing parts at it. The latter is what bad mechanics do. But it's still somewhat understandable, knowing how the lazier and less academic approach is often the order of the day when actually running a business, and jumping straight to a replacement part would indeed fix the problem quickly. But the really bad thing to me is that he did the replacement with a non-matching part.
So, I don't endorse him. Based on that simple lack of attention to detail, I myself would never take a rare or vintage instrument to him. I'd be afraid that he'd be operating out of rote, not really paying attention to the specific individual problems of the instrument. It's not that I am calling him a bad craftsman; I really don't know. It's just that I have reservations based on my own experience.
I was thinking somebody more like Dan Erlewine for your re-fret, who is specialized in restoration and repair of antique instruments. He did some restoration on my '27 Martin, and he is unbelievably great.
How is it that Dunlops aren't as durable as Jescars? I've never noticed particularly fast wear with Dunlops or particularly slow wear with Jescars.
If durability is your aim, just go with stainless. If I was doing a fretless wonder re-fret, and bothering to custom file frets down to .070" by .025", and deciding to have frets that low on a frequently played instrument, I'd sure as **** use stainless to do it, so I'd never have to do it again. Despite wive's tales, they don't sound any different in the end.
Leveling is usually done to smooth the board after the fret pulling creates problems in that regard around the fret slots. It's not necessary unless you have a severely warped neck, or you've really butchered the areas around the slots during pulling. You can level just enough to give the frets some narrow "flats" – no wider than 0.1" – to seat into after gluing your chips back in, but you don't need to sand into your inlays. Then you steel wool the edges of the flats to transition them back into the board.
As for the fret nibs, on a guitar that's already that modded, I wouldn't even sweat losing them. Maintaining them makes the re-fret much more painstaking, and the results not necessarily any better, from a players perspective.
Good luck. It's an awesome guitar.
So, instead of doing a simple diagnosis and quick fix, he just replaced the component. The way my mind works, and coming from a high tech mechanical background myself (mechanical operator on nuclear power plants), that's not a good way of handling a repair problem. You surgically diagnose a problem, or at lest attempt to, before just taking the shotgun approach and throwing parts at it. The latter is what bad mechanics do. But it's still somewhat understandable, knowing how the lazier and less academic approach is often the order of the day when actually running a business, and jumping straight to a replacement part would indeed fix the problem quickly. But the really bad thing to me is that he did the replacement with a non-matching part.
So, I don't endorse him. Based on that simple lack of attention to detail, I myself would never take a rare or vintage instrument to him. I'd be afraid that he'd be operating out of rote, not really paying attention to the specific individual problems of the instrument. It's not that I am calling him a bad craftsman; I really don't know. It's just that I have reservations based on my own experience.
I was thinking somebody more like Dan Erlewine for your re-fret, who is specialized in restoration and repair of antique instruments. He did some restoration on my '27 Martin, and he is unbelievably great.
How is it that Dunlops aren't as durable as Jescars? I've never noticed particularly fast wear with Dunlops or particularly slow wear with Jescars.
If durability is your aim, just go with stainless. If I was doing a fretless wonder re-fret, and bothering to custom file frets down to .070" by .025", and deciding to have frets that low on a frequently played instrument, I'd sure as **** use stainless to do it, so I'd never have to do it again. Despite wive's tales, they don't sound any different in the end.
Leveling is usually done to smooth the board after the fret pulling creates problems in that regard around the fret slots. It's not necessary unless you have a severely warped neck, or you've really butchered the areas around the slots during pulling. You can level just enough to give the frets some narrow "flats" – no wider than 0.1" – to seat into after gluing your chips back in, but you don't need to sand into your inlays. Then you steel wool the edges of the flats to transition them back into the board.
As for the fret nibs, on a guitar that's already that modded, I wouldn't even sweat losing them. Maintaining them makes the re-fret much more painstaking, and the results not necessarily any better, from a players perspective.
Good luck. It's an awesome guitar.
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