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Hey...Don't want to hijack Filippis thread on leveling frets, so I would like to know how many builders here have to level their frets after installing them?
I install my frets, clean and shine them and string up the guitar...I never have to level the frets.
Some people seem to be struggling with having to level frets....larry

Larry : Your more talented then I am. I always have to level and recrown.Wish I didn't have to though.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Larry,

I would love to not need to level frets. Do you mind walking us through your installation process? I am making an assumption that you press your frets; what cauls do you use (if doing compound radii, do you have multiple cauls [how many])? Do you fret before attaching the board or after? Do you build in any relief or fall off?

Okay, now my mouth is shut and my ears are open. . .

Edited: type-o

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Hi
since you guys are on the subject i might as well ask
I was pondering a method for a while but havn't the chance to
try it out yet

Say.. take your assembled guitar with the bridge fitted on
finished neck including the final f/b profile .....but not glued to body
and fret slots scored NOT cut .

Im just gonna simplify it for now and not include sacrificial bindings
so for this sake,
Say this assembled (with neck angle set correctly)
guitars not gonna have any fingerboard binding

If you then tighten the truss rod to get back bow
and you made a riser to sit where the nut should be

Then you got a Stu mac aluminum radius sanding beam
threaded your strings through it ,string it up
and left it for a while
After an appropriate time start sanding your fingerboard
but dont sand the first few frets much as you want relief there too
when you slacken off your truss rod later
After which you would take off your neck to saw your fret slots
and fret and finish and hopefully not have to do much if any
fret work
I would love to hear some input or some
some tips methods and problems which id face

Thanks for reading
Tomas

How much neck relief do you have on your guitars Larry? Just out of interest.

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Nick Oliver

http://www.oliver-guitars.com

For our simplified guitar process (for a class project), we just re-press the portions of the frets that are high. I doubt it's as accurate as a traditional leveling, but it's fast and seems to work. Video of our leveling process starts at 5:36: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpZSwsHQ9eU
Another method I've tried is to place the neck upside down on very flat and hard surface, then place a long thick caul on the neck, then hammer away... the high frets get pushed in further. It's pretty loud, though.

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David Malicky

When I first started building guitars the most frustrating thing was trying to level the frets..I learned to build guitars using John Mayes instructional CDs and the last CD I bought was "Fretting With John Mayes"...I highly recommend this CD if you are having fretting problems

I start with getting the neck blank where the FB is to be glued on as level as possible....Any bumps or dips here can be reflected in the top of the finger board..

The fingerboard is glued on. No frets are installed. I carve and shape the neck.

With no tension on the truss rod I get ready to level the fingerboard...One important thing to remember when leveling the fingerboard is that the neck has to be supported in several places underneath...I have a jig made for this...crude but it works...If it is not supported you will sand a curve in the fingerboard..

I take a pencil and cover the entire fingerboard with pencil marks...I use a fingerboard leveler with 120 sandpaper and sand the fingerboard until the pencil marks are gone...Keep checking your radius with a gauge to make sure you keep your radius.Use a finer sandpaper to get the desired surface

Install the frets...I use a fret press but find that a drill press works as good or better...So if you own a large drill press all you need is a fret press caul and radius inserts
Trim ends, bevel, clean and polish and she should be ready to go..

When the neck is on the guitar and strung up I tighten the truss rod to about a 5 Thou relief or less....

Hope this helps somebody..I know it works for me and I would be very surprised if I strung up a guitar and had a fret buzz...
Again I highly recommend John Mayes Instructional CDs.......Larry

It's been a while since I've seen a post on the subject where he participated, but Mario does not level frets after installation. He presses frets before installing the fretboard on his guitars. He does that backbend thing with his finger boards propping each end on a 1/2" block and weighting down the middle after fretting to make the board stay flat before installing.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I never would have thought it would be good enough to just press frets in and be done with it. Interesting to know that this works. I hammer them in so they are never perfectly accurate. Typically though it's just minimal filing to get it perfect. It's not really complected IMHO and doesn't take a lot of time to dress the tops and you have to dress the ends anyway.

Sorry guys, I don't buy it.
It's only possible if your action is going to be medium high.
I like my possible action to be as low as .050" high E, .075" low E at the 12th fret. That's low, and that's how a lot of my customers like it. No buzzes either, anywhere.
The best wire I've seen is the Jescar EVO, it is very consistent in dimensions through the rolls. I suspect their SS wire is of the same quality, but I've not used it. All the other fretwires I've used have lesser tolerances than the Jescar, some frets are going to be slightly higher or lower, maybe a few thous. That's enough to grant a thorough levelling.
Besides, whereas you press or hammer the frets, it's bound to introduce a bit of randomness, again in the order of a few thous perhaps.
Consequently I have to level the frets after fretting, and I radius/level the fretboard after assembling neck and body. Short of making a saddle and a nut, radiusing/levelling/fretting is the last operation I do. I have to take extremely little material with the Jescar, probably in the order of a few thou. But I still have to level to get that perfect fret job.
There is no way you can be that consistent, even with the perfect fretwire, in pressing or hammering the frets.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Hi Laurent....Not trying to sell anything here ..All I can tell you is that It seems to work for me....Maybe luck???....I pay a lot attention to getting my fingerboards to perfectly level ( with the right radius)...I have to say my action is not as low as yours...Mine is .115 and .90 on the 12 fret...On my next guitar I will go lower and see what happens...Since I was having such good results doing it this way ,I assumed that most builders were doing the same...Very surprised..

While I have built many "quick and dirty" guitars over the years, and some of them may have gone out with just a polish, I spend a LOT of time to make my fretboard as accurate, and beautiful as I can.
Sometimes the leveling goes smoothly with little level-filing, and sometimes it takes a lot more work.
There isn't a magic bullet, just courage to stick with it.

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

I level after as well. Normally it just takes a tiny bit of 320 on my leveling bar. Then crowning, polishing, fiddling with transitions on fret ends.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Larry, you mean .090" and .115"? .90" would be very high action indeed. I would qualify your action as more than medium high.
David, I think like everything else there is a method. It certainly can be, and is, different for every builder. But I stick to mine and it is extremely rare when I have a surprise. Maybe one out of ten I have to do a slight levelling with string tension on, otherwise it comes perfect out of the work. Unless the fretboard material is different and doesn't hold the tangs as well as it should, but then the CA pipette comes out…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

As a new builder, the most effective progress came for me came after building a very rigid, very straight fretboard gluing caul. Making the neck/fretboard assembly conform to the rigid caul during the glue cure results in a very straight cured assembly...and made a big difference in the overall quality of my necks.

I cut the fret slots prior to gluing and leave .01" on the fretboard surface. There is .03" chamfer on the fret grooves prior to sanding/leveling the fretboard. The assembly is left in the caul overnight. The fretboard is then sanded carefully with hard radiused blocks 240, 320, 400, 600, and a softer block with 800, 1000, and finally polished on the buffer. The result is a polished, raw fretboard with chamfered fret slots, The frets are then press mounted with an arbor.

My first neck and fretboard was glued with a dozen seperate clamps. The guitar plays great but there was a significant amount of leveling and crowning that got it there. The next four necks that were glued with the caul are visually perfect when sighting down the length of the neck. There is no fret out of place. I certainly don't expect to avoid leveling or crowning but it promises to be minimal.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

If I handed one of my clients a guitar with action that high they'd likely break it over my head. I have to level frets to get the playability I'm looking for.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

If I handed one of my clients a guitar with action that high they'd likely break it over my head. I have to level frets to get the playability I'm looking for.[/quote]

Be nice people, this isn't a contest.

Nice to see you are true to your motto....The only reason I put this post here was to try and help some of the guys who are having problems...Ive gotten help from lots of help here in the past...Anyway, hope that there is some info here that will help someone....Take care, Larry

I spent time leveling the frets on the last one I completed a couple of weeks ago..fretted then attached the neck..sanded with a quartz beam then dressed...I set the action per stew macs settings.....070 on the high e and .090 on the low e ..at the first fret .013 and .023..plays great, set relief at .002 /.003 at 8th fret using a straight edge slotted for the scale...I am sure I can go lower to Laurent's specs , question is how close are you guys setting the action at the first fret????

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MK5acoustics.com

Be nice people, this isn't a contest.

Nice to see you are true to your motto....The only reason I put this post here was to try and help some of the guys who are having problems...Ive gotten help from lots of help here in the past...Anyway, hope that there is some info here that will help someone....Take care, Larry[/quote]
Larry,
I'm just wondering a few things... One is have you ever done fret leveling or have you always done it this way? Do you dress the ends of the fret so that the corners roll over smoothly? The measurements you indicate are definitely on the high side of acceptable action. Some players like high action but most demand the lowest they can get. There always is a point at which a player has to compromise between buzz and soft action.

Fret leveling is not that time consuming, takes me about an hour, maybe a bit more. I'm of the opinion that you don't have to be incredible anal about it to get good results. Physicists put incredibly good numbers on paper but in the real world all you have to accomplish is for any one fret the next two-three in line are reasonable level to it.

I think you should try it, and then try lowering your action to medium or even lowest action possible and see what happens, you can always shim a saddle...

I Press my frets into the fingerboard prior to gluing it to the neck shaft also.
Like others I make sure my fingerboard is true, an obvious step. I also chamfer the edges of the slots, this is very mportant IMO.
Like Stuart I have a very rigid clamping caul I use and I keep everything clamped for 24 hrs. I might note here I get the same results wether I use Titebond or epoxy.
I always level after this, it's good practice and it takes just a couple of minutes. There's been once or twice when I probably didn't need to, but why chance it. My standard action is .09/.06.
As a side note I once watched Frank Ford do a complete fret job from start to finish in 45 minutes, amazing!

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Perhaps I was a little "cranky" but there's nothing helpful in your original post. You said



( I do "struggle" with alot of stuff LOL) Saying that some builders are "having" to level frets seems like a insult. I'm sure most of us could assemble a playable guitar without "having" to level the frets, but it's possible we're looking for better than just playable. Mario uses some pretty intense methods on his guitars, and from what I've heard doesn't usually level frets. It's my understanding that he uses very precisely made fretwire, goes through procedures to relieve stress from the fretted, but no installed board, and checks the frets precisely with various fret rockers and straightedges. On the high frets he finds he presses them in more to make them level. I suspect Mario does this to keep his fret crowns tall and consistant, not to keep from "having" to level frets.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

I have found it is absolutely essential on these forums to give folks the "benefit of the doubt" and to make postings that are semantically respectful BECAUSE it is so easy to misunderstand another person without visual cues that accompany speech. I mention this because I can see this particular thread perhaps going downhill unnecessarily so.

In this case, I think Larry Drover was trying to offer some advice and help out individuals that may be struggling. As he said, he finds his method works pretty well. More than likely, he is doing a fine job and is getting great results.

Larry, I would also recommend to you that you look at doing a very minor fret level. I achieve a perfectly straight fretboard and also press in my frets. I have no doubt that I could easily get away without leveling my frets. However, I think it is near impossible to achieve perfection without some minor leveling. It doesn't add much time to the build process and is a great way of checking whether your work is spot on.

The original post was " Hey...Don't want to hijack Filippos thread on leveling frets, so I would like to know how many builders here have to level their frets after installing them?
I install my frets, clean and shine them and string up the guitar...I never have to level the frets.
Some people seem to be struggling with having to level frets....larry

Simple enough guestion...

I should have posted "some Amateurs like myself" instead of "some people". Guess I have to choose my words more carefully around "Some Pros"

Bryan...Wanted to know my method...It was explained as best I could..John Mayes neglects to say in his CD video that you need to use a tiny bit of 320 on a leveling bar. If he had done so this thread would not be here .I learned how to build guitars from John Mayes CDs and the people in here. John Mayes instructions worked for me..It came as a surprise that the Pros do some leveling...

The post was simple ...Who levels their frets...I am am amateur builder and I am in no way shape or form here to tell the experienced builders how to build guitars...

I hope some "amateurs" read this thread If you want to get away with a lot of fretwork..you can..A good fret job starts with a level fretboard

Thank you Simonf..I will take your advice and lightly kiss the top of the frets with some 320.
Also Thank you Filippo for your supporting words...

Coming in here sometimes ,All bushey tailed, ask a question and you end up going away with your tail tucked tucked between your legs...Sorry I asked a question....Larry
Larry


Filippo

Larry, anybody can make false assumptions. We all do, sooner or later, and once in a while. Perhaps it is your use of the verb "struggle" with fret level that ticked off some people. In any case I don't think anybody was either rude or chastising.

My hunch was that your action must be high, and I was correct. .090" /.115" for me would only be playable in the first 3 frets if the nut action is as low as it can be, and painfully so. I know I certainly could never deliver a guitar with such a set up, or at least I've not been asked to, yet.

Obviously if some builders have developed a method that does not require a final levelling of the frets I'd love to know how they do it… It's not a big deal in any case as I never have to remove much material, and with the re-crowning the two operations take maybe 20 minutes.

Filippo, any clue you'd like to share? Does your friend use cantilevered necks? I can somewhat see how it is possible on a traditionally built nylon string as the action can never be quite as low as a steel, but on a traditionally built steel string with a glued on fretboard extension?

Simon, it's nice of you to be compassionate. However if you re-read the thread you'll find that Larry's high action is not what I would call a method that works well and achieves great results. You are right about the absence of body language, but I am afraid this the nature of Internet forums, so word choices do matter in this context.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I do say in the video that the leveling, setup ect was in a future DVD to come. I've not done that one yet. And for this reason I've not sold the fretting DVD by itself for quite some time. It's information is good albiet a bit incomplete. I still put it in the full set of DVD's however.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com