refretting a Fender stratocaster PART 2 (evaluation and reading the neck)

Jason from The Musician's Den in Evansville, IN walks you through a complete refret on an '04 American Deluxe Stratocaster. In part 2 we evaluate our guitar and learn to read the neck a bit.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Evansville
• Fender
• Indiana
• lutherie
• nut
• refret
• repair
• roller
• stratocaster

[mooney1862]

Any proprietry wood filler treatment I could use to make the surface a little slicker??

I have made a classical guitar before, so have a few skills, I'm really going to consider re-fretting this... thought your series is very good, there are one or two issues I don't understand, so expect a few questions.. thanks for posting ,, it's certainly appreciated by me ... AWESOME!!

[smbstressfest]

@mooney1862 What do you mean by "slicker"? If you mean smooth and highly polished just sand it up extra fine and polish with 0000 steel wool before fretting. 

[mooney1862]

hey .. watched through most of this series and will be watching the rest. I have an old 70's Tele, and teh fingerboard is pretty much busted up surface wise, and teh frets certainly need replacing. My question is, that the finger board is very shallow, so not sure how much I can take off the surface to take out all the major holes and pits. Also the f/b seems quite porous. there is only about 1/32" between fret bottom and neck. Is there any proprietry wood filler i could use..

[smbstressfest]

@mooney1862 You'll probably have to refret without leveling the fingerboard much at all. Those thin veneer boards are a real PITA sometimes. Don't obsess over taking every little wear spot out, just focus on making sure the surface is true for the frets to be installed correctly. The fingerboard didn't wear underneath the fret crowns, concern yourself only with that area. And DON'T use wood filler, it will look like crap and sometimes the wear spots are aesthetically correct for an old guitar.

[jjobie]

Is the binding on Gibson guitars the main difference between refretting a Fender neck vs. a Gibson neck?

[smbstressfest]

@jjobie Not all Gibsons have fingerboard binding, but when they do it's a tie between the binding factor and the fact that the necks are set as opposed to bolted on. The latter changes your strategy for installing frets higher up on the neck, making it a little more time consuming typically.

[jacwilts]

Jason, Thank you for your work and taking the time to post this. I look forward to viewing the whole series. This is very informative, and a truly great service.

[paulk2225]

Thank you, great video series.

[kammhron]

Awesome info. I could listen to this guitar talk all day!.

[mooney1862]

@smbstressfest atahst's just what I meant, but the wood seems very dry and quite porous, i have used a cabinet scraper on it, but ithink it might need some sort of oil on it . I'll try to video it and post so you can see what I mean..  thanks again for a great series... kudos

[SuperGuitarpractice]

superb videos!

[smbstressfest]

@lonestar7703 I have replied in a PM.