Fear of fret fettling

[Annoying Twit]

Please help me conquer my fear of fret fettling.

I'm used to very basic setups, but am scared to do anything to the frets themselves.

I've bought a cheap bass (Harley Benton 'Deko PJ) for £35 for the express purpose of doing things to its frets.

Today I bought some fine steel wool and some masking tape to have a go at polishing the frets. I do also want a try to level the frets, but I'm finding the symptoms of fret unevenness a bit confusing. There is fret buzz when I fret the 11th fret on the E and A strings (tuning is BEADG), but using my short straight edges, I don't find a simple rock over a high 12th fret.

Even though this might be ass backwards, I thought of practicing polishing first before I gird my loins and attempt to level them.

This video makes it look easy. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hEBYYs0foY[/media]

BTW: The backup purpose for this bass should I wreck it is to defret it.


EDIT: Shiny shiny


The bass is now back together. It doesn't play any better with shiny frets, but it does now look quite a bit nicer as the frets were quite tarnished before. There is still a hint that if I could look into the frets somewhere around the 12th fret that I could get a lower action without fret buzz. I've got just a bit of buzz now. I find it playable as it is, but the purpose of this bass is to experiment. When I had the neck off I did use my improvised high fret finding short straight edges to look for high frets. I found a very minor amount of fret rocking at the 12th fret, but it was very little. But something is giving me buzz, so there must be something that can improve.

Nice to see that £1 for three rolls masking tape seems to do the job and comes off easily without leaving any residue or anything on the neck.

Was it paranoia to use masking tape when I steel wool the frets? I've read that some people use steel wool on the fretboard itself to smooth it.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Annoying Twit

[MoonBassAlpha]

This is pretty much what I did, got a really beaten-up Squier tele to practice fretwork on. Some frets were lifting, a lot of the ends were protruding, ideal really. I made a straight edge from a piece of angled aluminium and used double sided tape to stick 1000 grade emery to it so I could really go at it without taking too much meat off the frets. Black marker on the tops of frets to show up the low spots.
I also got a crowning tool.
The tele came out really nice and gave me confidence to do some work for mates on theirs.
Next time I do one, I may use 400 grade then 1000 to speed things up a bit.
I say give it a go!!

[Manton Customs]

It's certainly something you can achieve and on a bass of that price you really haven't got much to lose! Modern frets have a LOT of material there before you are in any danger of running out of wire. I'm guessing you already know the process from videos etc, so I won't go into that, but if you have isolated fret buzz at the 11th fret you definitely have a high fret. Any rock with your short straight edge indicates a problem which needs to be dealt with. If you view it at eye level you will see which fret it is rocking on, but level them all, not just that one.

Also ignore videos you see using a radius block to level frets....it's not the right way to do it.

Protecting the fingerboard with masking tape was not a bad move at all.

[blablas]

Could be that the eleventh fret is lower than the surrounding ones.

[Annoying Twit]

Thanks guys. These are definitely big fat frets. Now they they're polished, they [b]look[/b] to be a quality material At least they polish up well.

I'm very tempted to follow the method whereby a straight file is pushed down the fretboart from top to bottom, Only the weight of the file itself takes material off, so it's very slow. One step towards that will be getting the neck straight. It's not too far off with current truss rod tension, but it will take time if I'm correct in thinking that I have to make small truss rod adjustments and then leave the neck to settle for a fair while.

I'll have a closer look at the rocking. I wondered if the eleventh fret might be lower than the others around it. How can I tell the difference between a high 12th fret and a low 11th one?

Edited April 3, 2015 by Annoying Twit

[0175westwood29]

i was lucky really, i found a tech who was willing to share his knowledge with me, its a thing not many do as it will probs lose them your business and others but you really do have to do something very severe to ruin the frets on a new bass/guitar to a point where they need replacing.

the best thing to do is if possible take the neck of, then mark all the frets with a black marker, then get a straight edge file and you will see the pen disappear in the places where your high, then use a fret file to recrown the frets on a good file this should only take 7/8 passes again use the black pen to mark the now leveled fret again and crown the frets till this is gone.then a quick polish with wire wool.

is important to get the neck straight before this tho as otherwise the frets being level on a bent neck wnt be any good.

something very rewarding tho to know you have done the work.

andy

[Wilco]

My knowledge of levelling frets is next to zero, however I'm right with you when it comes to having polished frets.

To possibly make your life easier next time round, Planet Waves do an excellent fret polishing package - card template to protect the fretboard, & 5 pieces of material which do a great job of buffing up the frets. Would save all that time masking.

Last time I used a metal polish called Peek (& didn't even protect the fretboard - no harm done, but possibly not a good idea!). Fret by fret, put a small amount on a cloth to clean, used another cloth to immediately wipe it off & give an initial buff & then finished polishing with a microfibre cloth. End result was super shiny!

[KingBollock]

I wish I had the guts to have a go at it.