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Poor refret or recrown?


ShreddinBlues

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Yea, those look enormous..

 

I had a Swingster that had frets that looked A LOT like those.

 

Had a very "Toothy" feel to it. didn't like it. (note the words "HAD a Swingster")..

I do think you could get them shaved down and re-crowned.

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It seems to me the crowning file cut right into the wood. Whoever did the recrowning should have used a fret guard if his or her using a standard crowning file is that untrained. While it's not an issue per se in terms of playability, it sure is unsightly. Especially as time moves on and player DNA gathers at the fret ends, the grooves will be ever more glaring.

 

The fix: scraping the fretboard with a super-sharp razor blade so as to make it perfectly level again (we're talking taking a tiny .010-.020" off here depending on the depth of the "grooves"). I would leave that job to the professional in any case.

 

What's the context here? Where did you see this?

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It looks to me like it may have had wider medium jumbo frets before the fret job and the new narrower frets do not cover the edge impressions of the old frets.

 

frets_01.jpg

 

the wider frets may have looked like the image below, notice the scoring on the fingerboard along the edge of the frets.

 

WornFrets.JPG

 

light scoring also on this one.

 

65-355fretnibs.jpg

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Thanks for the quick replies on this! She has .092 width frets on it now, which feel pretty thin to me...and maybe had the .095 or wider before. FYI I can’t notice any playability issues, but as mentioned, it’s unsightly for sure.

 

Now I have to decide whether or not to keep it or return it as I’d hate to have any issues on a resale if I ever decided to sell it. The rest of this LP Special is in really nice condition, but dang, I paid top money for it.

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I don't know if it's a refret or a leveling/crown job, but whichever it is, it's very poorly done -- a classic "hack job." From the varying top contours of the frets --some are rounded, some flattish -- to the extremely poor job dressing the fret ends, it really looks like one of the really terrible fret jobs I did when I was learning how to do it right. I'm sorry to be so critical, but those pics show some really lousy frets. One reason why so many companies and shops are going to PLEK is because there's a real scarcity of people who can install and maintain frets properly. I think robots installing stainless steel will be the standard pretty soon, since human beings just cannot do this job (or, while we're at it, cut a proper nut) anymore. Sorry to see that. Hope you can make it playable without having to do a whole refret.

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