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Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

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  • #31
    Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

    Oh, new question for everyone. How do you get all the tool marks out of the frets after leveling and make them perfectly smooth? Sandpaper? (What grit?) Steel wool?
    NEVER steel wool (see my rants elsewhere about that). Yes - sandpaper, I use 3 grits - 220, 440, and 620 wet or dry paper. But first, use the triangular file to round over the flat edge of the fret and the corners at the edge of the fretboard. Also - the tang of the file that is poking you? They make handles for those so you don't stab yourself....
    aka Chris Pile, formerly of Six String Fever

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    • #32
      Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

      Originally posted by ICTGoober View Post
      NEVER steel wool (see my rants elsewhere about that). Yes - sandpaper, I use 3 grits - 220, 440, and 620 wet or dry paper.
      OK, I'll give that a shot. I've got some 400 and I think 600 grit somewhere in the back of the garage. I assume that you sand the long way, lengthwise across the fret?




      Originally posted by ICTGoober View Post
      But first, use the triangular file to round over the flat edge of the fret and the corners at the edge of the fretboard. Also - the tang of the file that is poking you? They make handles for those so you don't stab yourself....
      I tried it with the handle on, but the handle was kinda wide and then wouldn't lay flat to let me slide it up and down the fretboard nicely. :P
      Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

      Originally posted by Douglas Adams
      This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

      Comment

      • #33
        Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

        Originally posted by nexion218 View Post
        @GuitarStv: I'm starting to hope that you'll find many more guitars that you can "ruin". Excellent writings! Anxiously waiting for the next updates like it's some super exciting TV series - only it's better!
        I've been doing my best to avoid excitement this time. I want boring with a good result. :P
        Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

        Originally posted by Douglas Adams
        This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

        Comment

        • #34
          Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

          I would probably just remove the frets, pot the pickups, shield it, and use a taller nut so it could be used for slide. Because I doubt you can intonate that thing very well to begin with so I'm not sure it would be worth refretting?

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          • #35
            Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

            Originally posted by idsnowdog View Post
            I would probably just remove the frets, pot the pickups, shield it, and use a taller nut so it could be used for slide. Because I doubt you can intonate that thing very well to begin with so I'm not sure it would be worth refretting?
            My whole goal was simply to learn how to refret stuff! If I get a playable instrument at the end, so much the better . . . if I don't like it in the end maybe I'll be able to sell it to recoup the costs of the fretwire.


            I've got several cheap guitars that aren't worth refretting but mean a lot to me that I'd like to fix up if this works out. So far so good.
            Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

            Originally posted by Douglas Adams
            This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

            Comment

            • #36
              Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

              OK, I'll give that a shot. I've got some 400 and I think 600 grit somewhere in the back of the garage. I assume that you sand the long way, lengthwise across the fret?
              Lengthwise with the coarse, then across the fret as you use the finer stuff.

              I tried it with the handle on, but the handle was kinda wide and then wouldn't lay flat to let me slide it up and down the fretboard nicely.
              Right. Just be careful.

              This is probably a good time to remind you that Dan Erlewine and Stewart-Macdonald have some great vids on YouTube. You might want to check them out.
              aka Chris Pile, formerly of Six String Fever

              Comment

              • #37
                Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                So, I was looking at the wiring for this guitar last night. It seems pretty straight forward. There's a volume and tone pot, and three on/off switches (one for each pickup). That all makes sense to me.

                But there's also a regular/solo switch. It was disconnected from the circuit and I tried to take a pic of it here:



                Kinda blurry, but if the switch is like this:

                P1 P2
                P3 P4
                P5 P6

                - There's a cap wired from P2 to P6. Couldn't read the value, I think it said 100 something. I know that's not helpful.
                - There's a white wire that goes from P3 to nowhere
                - There's a white wire that goes from P4 to nowhere

                That wiring makes no sense to me at all. Anyone know what the hell this thing did, or how to hook it back up? Or even if I should?


                If not it's no biggie, I'll just use the switch to disconnect the tone pot in 'Solo' mode for more volume/brightness and add it back in for 'Regular' mode. These old pickups didn't sound very strong, so the ability to kick a little more volume out of them might be handy.




                Originally posted by ICTGoober View Post
                This is probably a good time to remind you that Dan Erlewine and Stewart-Macdonald have some great vids on YouTube. You might want to check them out.
                Yeah, I like Erlewine's videos . . . you can get some great information out of them. Sometimes it kinda feels like they're just flogging Stew-Mac tools though. :P
                Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                Comment

                • #38
                  Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                  I might have misssed it, but have you checked the neck for being straight before levelling? Or you are going to do the whole thing with the ghetto rocker-3 frets at a time approach and that way you expect the effect of relief to be negligible over such short sections of the neck?

                  When I corrected a few dead spots on frets, I even went up to 1000 grit to remove the toolmarks and then used either jewelry polishing coth or car polish compound.

                  Comment

                  • #39
                    Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                    Sounds like the "solo" switch might have been something similar to the "strangle" switch on a Jaguar: a bass cut.
                    Originally posted by LesStrat
                    Yogi Berra was correct.
                    Originally posted by JOLLY
                    I do a few chord things, some crappy lead stuff, and then some rhythm stuff.

                    Comment

                    • #40
                      Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                      So, I leveled the frets last night. Didn't seem like a biggie. First I filed down the high spots a bit that had been marked previously with the triangular file, checking with the ghetto fret rocker if things were far enough/too far. Then I did a few quick passes with the big ass file over all the frets. Checking with the rocker again it seemed to look good. I did a sanity check with my level against them and they seemed to be good.

                      Then there were some noticeable flat sections so I tried to crown the frets. First I drew a black line across the top of each with a sharpie, and then I tried using the triangle file to make a nice crown. I didn't like it. The pointy edges make me nervous around the fretboard (even though it's taped), and it's really hard to hold it in the right position. I also found that it was hard to get a rounded profile to the fret crown. So, I tried the fret crowning file with the concave sides. This was better, although it took me a while to get a feel for it it seems to leave a more rounded upper fret surface. It's weird to use though, you don't just press it down and file the top of the fret, you kinda angle it to take off the shoulders of the fret. It's annoying because it builds up with metal shavings very quickly so I had to stop and clean it off with a paper towel regularly.

                      Maybe some pictures will show what I mean . . .



                      I wanted the round shaped fret . . . but was getting the triangle shaped one with the triangle file (which, admittedly, was probably user error). The fret crowning file gave me the shape on the left. Anyhoo, this part wasn't too bad. Maybe a half hour or so and I had sanded down the thick black sharpie lines on the tops of the frets to pretty thin black sharpie lines. But now there were lots of marks on my previously beautiful and polished frets.



                      Then I dug through my sandpaper in the garage and found some 200, 300, 400, and 600 grit paper. Man alive, this part was boring. I went over each fret lengthwise with the each grit of sandpaper and it gradually got smoother and smoother. Tried going over the short section of the fret rather than lengthwise with the 600 grit, but I found it difficult to do. Probably about two hours to do this. It is pretty smooth now, but could be smoother. I'll pick up some 800 grit (and 1000 if they have it) from the hardware store tonight and give 'er a few more passes.





                      Originally posted by nexion218 View Post
                      I might have misssed it, but have you checked the neck for being straight before levelling? Or you are going to do the whole thing with the ghetto rocker-3 frets at a time approach and that way you expect the effect of relief to be negligible over such short sections of the neck?
                      Yeah, don't know if I mentioned it but I measured the fretboard itself after pulling all the frets and it was very straight (almost dead on). I didn't really have a way to measure the straightness of the neck after banging the frets in, so am hoping that this hasn't changed the neck significantly, and the three fret approach will be close enough.





                      Originally posted by ItsaBass View Post
                      Sounds like the "solo" switch might have been something similar to the "strangle" switch on a Jaguar: a bass cut.
                      This is what I'm thinking. Which seems silly . . . on a low output guitar with three single coils I don't think bass is going to need to be cut too much. I had a think about wiring last night, and have decided to go with a blower switch in it's place that cuts both the volume and tone control out of the circuit. This way you can be playing along in rhythm with your tone/volume dialed in, flick on the blower circuit to get max tone/volume for a solo, then flick it off to go back to your previous settings. I think that this wiring should do it:

                      Solo Switch:
                      P1 P2
                      P3 P4
                      P5 P6

                      - link P5 to P6
                      - link P1 to P2
                      - pickup hot wire to P3
                      - connect P4 to the hot lug of the jack
                      - P2 to the middle lug of the volume pot

                      If my reasoning is correct, in solo position this will give me a straight path from the pickup to jack (pickups - P3 - P5 - P6 - P4 - input jack) and in regular mode it operates as normal with vol/tone (pickups - P3 - P1 - P2/volume pot/P4/ground). This way, the blower should work on whatever pickup combination in selected.
                      Last edited by GuitarStv; 08-28-2019, 09:34 AM.
                      Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                      Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                      This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                      Comment

                      • #41
                        Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                        I think now you know why fret levels are usually left to the pros with the tools, techniques, and experience to make them right. It is not easy even with the correct tools, and involves certain wrist rolling techniques which are hard to master. And it's why I charge a premium to do it, and get it. But drive on - don't let me stop you from learning, which is always a good thing.
                        aka Chris Pile, formerly of Six String Fever

                        Comment

                        • #42
                          Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                          Honestly, it's mind numbingly boring and time consuming, but doesn't seem to be too difficult. So far, the hardest/scariest thing for me by a long shot was hammering in the frets. All this fiddly work seems to be mostly a matter of patience and stubbornness. I think that the stainless steel frets actually end up helping me here . . . if I'm a little too rambunctious when doing something they're tougher and are don't get screwed up quite as fast as regular frets would. It also means that everything takes forever though.

                          The neck was feeling/looking pretty good last night. We'll see how she plays when she's all together with some fresh strings slapped on.

                          One thing that this has definitely shown me is how ****ty some of the techs I have taken guitars to in the past actually are. The last fret level that my Epi Dot got, I'm 100% certain the guy just filed all the frets flat, didn't crown them at all and did some polishing. They're completely flat across the top. When I got it back it didn't sound quite right, but I wasn't quite sure exactly what the issue was. When I complained, he told me that the guitar needed to be refretted (which, I guess it did after the fret work) and that was the best anyone could do. Never took it back to that guy.
                          Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                          Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                          This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                          Comment

                          • #43
                            Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                            Honestly, it's mind numbingly boring and time consuming...... this fiddly work seems to be mostly a matter of patience and stubbornness.
                            Yes. Most real work is like that. I had a couple apprentices who thought it would be exciting or glamourous and found out it was mostly endless sanding on wood or metal, or sanding and polishing a finish endlessly until it shined. Only one kid made it through the year-long program.

                            One thing that this has definitely shown me is how ****ty some of the techs I have taken guitars to in the past actually are. The last fret level that my Epi Dot got, I'm 100% certain the guy just filed all the frets flat, didn't crown them at all and did some polishing. They're completely flat across the top. When I got it back it didn't sound quite right, but I wasn't quite sure exactly what the issue was.
                            Yes, again - and thus my daily posting here and elsewhere. Crowning - or rounding over the top of the frets is hard, and some guys don't do it. What happens is the intonation is thrown off and it feels wrong on your fingers. I've had to fix several guitars partially done by hacks who got paid good money, but didn't deliver. Then the client pays me again to make it right.
                            aka Chris Pile, formerly of Six String Fever

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                            • #44
                              Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                              Toot toot.

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                              • #45
                                Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                                Replaced all the bad switches, changed the solo/rhythm switch to a blower, and and tested that all the electronics were working last night. Also, all of the little screws holding everything into the body of the guitar (truss cover, pickguard, bridge) were stripped when I was taking them out, and about half of them actually had rust on the threads. Which is weird, I've never seen that before. I think I was lucky to get them out of the body in the first place while disassembling. So, I threw out the Phillips screws after finding some matching size ones with a Robertson head, and screwed everything back into the guitar body.



                                Then I wanted to see if the sanding I had done was enough, so popped the neck back on, then the nut on the neck and strung everything up for a test. Definitely jumped the gun there. Frets still kinda feel gritty for one . . . it's like bending strings across high grit sandpaper. :P I also found three frets that I missed which are a touch too high and causing buzzing, so I guess it'll be back to filing and leveling tonight. Sigh. I feel like getting a dremel on this would be a better way to do things.

                                Good news is that the guitar sounds great now (blower switch is kinda awesome on it - and the pickups are kinda cool . . . all three on at the same time in parallel is definitely a different sound), and the frets feel good to play on right up to the 21st (with the exception of the high ones and the gritty bending). I put some 12-52s on, which feel about right for the 24 inch scale.
                                Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                                Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                                This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                                Comment

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