Basic stone & re-crown from - £80

Basic re-fret from - £120

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Overview

The frets on a guitar need the attention of a repair shop when the pitting caused by string wear becomes noticeable when playing, especially when bending notes. Frets are traditionally made from an alloy of nickel and silver which is softer than strings. The thinking is that if the frets were harder than the strings then you'd have even more breakages. Recently, however, some manufacturers are fitting stainless steel frets with considerable success and improved fret longevity. Most players convince themselves that fret wear = re-fret: this is almost always not the case. From our experience, you can stone and re-crown frets two or three times before a complete fret replacement or re-fret is necessary.

As detailed below, a re-fret includes a stone and re-crown which includes a set up, so we'll describe them in order.

Re-Fret

Firstly, a full assessment of the instrument is carried out and the guitar is thoroughly cleaned. The fretboard radius is determined and the size of the existing frets is carefully measured. In order to maker this measurement we need to remove a fret from the guitar and this is achieved through the gentle application of heat and specially designed fret removing pliers. The key measurements are the width and depth of the tang of the fret - all other specifications can be adjusted to the need of the owner; for example the width and height of the fret. You have to duplicate the tang size or you can distort the neck and fingerboard of the guitar. Imagine the wedging effect of 20 frets that are just slightly too wide (by 0.2mm for example a total of 4mm!) - you would introduce a back bow to the neck if you were to use a replacement fret whose tang is wider. This however gives us a repair technique for a badly distorted neck!

Having identified the fretwire we need (usually Jim Dunlop brand) we can remove the rest of the frets and the nut and, having masked any exposed parts of the guitar and completely straightened the neck with the truss rod, thoroughly sand the fingerboard up to 1200 grit using radius sanding blocks to match the radius of the fingerboard. Removal of the frets also gives the shop the chance to repair any finger pitting in the face of the fingerboard (usually due to inadequate cleaning leaving acidic finger oils on the bare fingerboard wood). This can often be invisibly repaired at an extra charge.

After sanding, the fret slots are cleaned of debris and the cut frets are pre-bent to radius (and if necessary the tang is nipped to fit over any binding on the fingerboard edge) and either hammered or pressed home, whichever is most appropriate. Once all the frets are installed the edges are carefully chamfered to the edge of the fingerboard and the ends filed for player comfort. We are now ready to stone the frets.

Stone and Re-crown

Traditionally, the frets of a guitar are 'stoned' flat to each other using a whetstone. Here at MGR we feel that this is a potentially inaccurate methode which can result in more work later in the set up. We therefore prefer to use radius blocks mounted with abrasive or completely flat swiss files or, depending on the fretboard layout, both. During our earlier assessment we would have determined the fretboard radius which can range from 7 ¼" for vintage Fender Tele's to 20" for Ibanez type speed guitars or, occasionally on modern guitars a compound radius (i.e. a conical section).

The concept is to produce a completely even playing surface, removing the minute imperfections in the fret tops left from the installation process. It is worth taking time over this. The idea is to take of just enough metal to achieve our purpose. We are now left with a set of 20+ frets with a flat, scratched top. This flatness is addressed by re-crowning the fret using special fret files to recreate the original rounded surface. These files have to be handled carefully - a slip means marring of the fretboard surface. The scratches left by these processes is now progressively removed using various grades of abrasive and wire wool to achieve a highly polished surface.

We now check the nut to see if this needs to be replaced. This may be necessary if the guitar has been re-fretted as the existing string slots may now be too low for the new fret surface. If a new nut is required then this is the moment to make and fit it so that we can proceed with a full set up and intonation.

©Martin's Guitar Repairs, 2003