Fret Dressing.

[WhiskeyJack]

Hey @muttley this is primarily a 'you' kind of question. was going to PM you but it's possible someone else may want to or need to know.

My tele kit has been together for about a year now and and has had a bunch of kinks worked out of it. But one thing i didn't do a great job of was the fret ends. They are a little sharpish. Additionally i didn't do a real glowing job of crowning some of them and a few other little glaring things that could have been done better.

My question is, typically when should the ends of the frets get dressed up ? Before or after levelling/crowning? I feel like it would make more sense to the ends after you do everything else? But I could be wrong.

I am going to do another level and crown on them as you can see now how poorly i did the first time around. Also having the bridge radius totally wrong (ever so slightly concave versus convex ) the first time around really did a number on some of the higher frets.

It is fixable, not a total mess, but i don't want to make more work for myself by doing something in the wrong order.

[muttley]

Set the neck as straight as you can.

Stone the frets level.

(I often advise noobs to put a set of strings on at this point and set neck relief to check for fret buzz)

Crown the frets

Polish to a half decent shine.

Round or bevel the fret ends according to preference

Final polish

Set up.

[WhiskeyJack]

Set the neck as straight as you can.

Stone the frets level.

(I often advise noobs to put a set of strings on at this point and set neck relief to check for fret buzz)

Crown the frets

Polish to a half decent shine.

Round or bevel the fret ends according to preference

Final polish

Set up.

Perfect !!!

Sadly I've already beveled the ends but nothing else. Oops.

(I often advise noobs to put a set of strings on at this point and set neck relief to check for fret buzz)

Definitely didn't do this last time and will this time.

For this step, after setting the neck relief post stringing how long do you yourself usually wait for the neck to settle in before doing anything? I suppose if all you are doing is checking for fret buzz it doesn't need to sit for hours.

then if you do find fret buzz what's your process for fixing that?

[muttley]

On a typical tele neck you can tweak the truss rod and it will pretty much stay where it is. If you have significant fret buzz with the action and string gauge you want try adding a little more relief and that may work. If it is just one or two spots then it's back to step one in that area. Old strings are OK for this as you are interested in the tension and not the intonation at this point.

[WhiskeyJack]

On a typical tele neck you can tweak the truss rod and it will pretty much stay where it is. If you have significant fret buzz with the action and string gauge you want try adding a little more relief and that may work. If it is just one or two spots then it's back to step one in that area. Old strings are OK for this as you are interested in the tension and not the intonation at this point.

Awesome.

Ok. This sounds better than what i had in my head.

I have a box of 9's someone got me a bunch of Christmases ago set asdie for just this sort of thing.



Thanks Mutt!

I have a few zoom meetings today and i may try to pull a sneaky and work on this while i am in those! Just make damn sure my camera is off LOL!

[Armistice]

I have a few zoom meetings today and i may try to pull a sneaky and work on this while i am in those! Just make damn sure my camera is off LOL!

I did a lot of that... even did some recording whilst in a "meeting" with a hundred people that I had to attend but wasn't particularly interested in...