Fretting the refretting issue

[uOpt]

Thinking out loud fishing for random remarks.

I'm thinking about going from just doing levelings+crowning to doing full refrets. That means of course that I have to make a decision whether to buy a full set of tools or not. It's not only the price of the tools holding me back, I also run out of room in the hobby room and if I ever have to move any kind of tools/workbench setup will add to the moving pain.

But importantly, many of my most played guitars are LPs or other types with that stupid fret edge binding. So if anything I would have to be good enough to be one of the few people on the planet to do refrets preserving the binding. On the bright side that way I could fix up guitars that Gibson screwed up right in the factory.

Maybe I should just buy a songbook and play more?

 

[DarkMatter]

Re: Fretting the refretting issue

Are the frets in really bad shape? I'd lean towards level/crowning if at all possible, but if that means the frets would be shorter than you're comfortable playing on then obviously that option wouldn't be ideal. The binding does complicate things but its not impossible to refret, just very, very hard to do cleanly.

If you already have some fret files you could try and crown a few to see how the height comes out then decide where to go from there.

 

[macki]

Re: Fretting the refretting issue

I recently started to learn to refret. Its actually quite fun in my opinion (completely redid my old Kramer Pacer) and I enjoy being able to work on my own guitars (its helps me understand what is important to me and how to set up the guitar properly).

I was a bit put off by the cost but I really worked through ebay and the web, and really brought the cost down relative to buying everything from Stewmac.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Fretting the refretting issue

Are the frets in really bad shape? I'd lean towards level/crowning if at all possible, but if that means the frets would be shorter than you're comfortable playing on then obviously that option wouldn't be ideal. The binding does complicate things but its not impossible to refret, just very, very hard to do cleanly.

If you already have some fret files you could try and crown a few to see how the height comes out then decide where to go from there.

I already level and crown frets for many years. My own guitars are all in good shape except for one which needs smaller frets. Question is do I make the next step?