hi
the first 3 fretwires of my old telecaster are finally down played.
especially the g and h string positions.
now i have the question: can i exchange the first 3 seperate, ,
or have i to change the whole guitar fretwire 1-22 ?



to mathjis:
i have currently no scanner. i didnt forget the scans of the
equipment.as soon as i get my scanner back, i´ll scan you
the whole pages in a big format.
sorry for your long waiting!

-----------------------------------------------------
Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2006-06-29 21:54 by TeleK.

If you pop your guitar along to decent tech, he'll suggest one of two or three options.
It's certainly possible to replace just those offending frets... so long as the rest are still servicable. Sometimes if an exact fret wire match can't be found, some guys will remove the top couple of frets at the other end of the board and fit those as replacements. They'll then fit new frets at the body end where any mismatch is less noticable.
It's also possible that your tech will suggest that the whole neck would really benefit from a total refret.
A futher posibility is that the frets aren't as badly worn as they look [wear notches always look deeper than they are] and are still tall enough to stand a good level and dressing.
Hope you get it sorted without too much grief or expense ;^)

the rest of the frets are 100% ok.
the problem is that the 2,3,4,5 fret is worn down on the g string
so when i grip the first fret the gstring is jaring.
thanks for your advice

btw perhaps i change the height of the gstring, and
try if the string is still jaring

-----------------------------------------------------
Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away

Be carefull: if you have a maple board you will need to relacquer the board after you put in the new frets. If you choose to only replace three frets, the lacquer job will turn out very ugly.

I would suggest to replace ALL frets. If frets wear out, it normally means they were made from bad material from the start. Replace them all with good quality wire, and you will have another 25 years of life. It won't cost you an arm and a leg.

Mathijs

All this talk about G-strings is making me kind of hot.

i have a maple board.
currently i have no money, so i decided to play this tele with capo.
sure it is sad , that i have a non 100% working instrument.
thanx for your advice.
my guitar tech will make it including lacquering for all in all 250 euro.


to mathjis:
i have currently no scanner. i didnt forget the scans of the
equipment.as soon as i get my scanner back, i´ll scan you
the whole pages in a big format.
sorry for your long waiting!

-----------------------------------------------------
Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away

To Mathijs or whoever knows:

I have a Las Paul Black Beauty copy (Epiphone). Is it true that the metal they use for the frets on these copies is not as good as on the original. I had my guitar adjusted a few weeks ago, and they said that it was worn down a lot, and that they'd never seen anything like it. I think the tree on the frets is rose tree (Very dark wood) BTW.

JumpingKentFlash

It's probably a safe bet, JKFlash. Epis are good guitars, but there's a big drop-off in quality (and price) from the Gibson versions.

Of course, you're probably better off with an Epi as I've heard that the quality of Gibsons has gone WAY down over the last few years.

Oh, and the fretboard is rosewood. Looks and sounds great.

JuanTCB, if its a exactp copy of the Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty, it has an ebony fretboard, not rosewood.
I agree, the quality of Gibson could be better but its still above the quality of Epiphone (that doesnt mean enough u wont be able to find an Epi that is on Gibson level but they are hard to find). Its not true that the quality of Gibsons went down over the last few years. It went down a lot during the 80ies but with the beginnig of the 90ies a new management took over and brought the quality up again.
Kent, i heard too that Epiphone used some cheap fret wire. A lot of the price difference between Gibson and Epiphone comes from the cheaper parts (woods, machine heads, pickups...) that are used on Epiphones. I would really be surprised if the same more expensive fretwire that Gibson uses.

Regards
Firebird

Didn't realize that the Black Beauties had ebony fretboards, though it makes sense judging from the name!

Agree with you, Firebird, but I was under the impression that the craftmanship of Gibsons has gone down the toilet lately as they've increased production to go with their latest marketing push (TV ads, Guitar Center, etc.). Little things, like rough fret edges, sloppy binding, blemishes in the finish . . . stuff like that. Basically, just sloppiness on the production line as opposed to inferior parts.

Just curious - when did the quality go down in the '80s? I've got an '83 Les Paul Standard and the only thing I've ever had to do to it is replace the frets after about 15 years - the thing is a beast.

There's been a lot of industry talk in recent years about "soft" or poor quality fretwire. I'm sure that there are bad batches that weren't tempered properly...but I suspect there always have been.
The perception of early fret wear in new/newish guitars often has more to do with how the frets are profiled. Well rounded narrow frets with a small radius crown will appear to wear very quickly at first because the crown is very narrow. Any wear notches will appear to be deeper or worse than they actually are. The wear slows down markedly as use flattens the profile of the fret. Wider frets with a larger radius crown will not appear to wear as quickly.
One particular Fender Strat in my collection is good example. I bought it new in 1990. After a few months, the wear to the frets appeared to be quite severe. After another five YEARS, it had worsened very little. After 16 years and two level and crown jobs...the frets are still plenty tall enough and good for another ten years of regular use.
Some folks these days are getting into stainless steel frets. They will obviously last longer...but some folks claim the sound to be a bit clinical... and many techs don't like wearing their files out on them ;^)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2006-06-30 21:02 by Spud.

Well quality started to go down in the early 80s but in the second half of the 80s it became really bad. But you have to keep in mind that even during this period a few really great guitars were produced by Gibson. Just the average level of quality went down a lot.

I had my fret wires re-done a couple years ago on my Les Paul Deluxe.
It came out a good job, even though, after a few month, I lost a piece of binding at the 24th fret, not that I ever get that high on the fretboards, still it was disappointing.
And the job was done by Italy's top luthier ...

dunhill Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I had my fret wires re-done a couple years ago on
> my Les Paul Deluxe.
> It came out a good job, even though, after a few
> month, I lost a piece of binding at the 24th fret,
> not that I ever get that high on the fretboards,
> still it was disappointing.
> And the job was done by Italy's top luthier ...


Just as a matter of curiosity, who made the job?

C

liddas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just as a matter of curiosity, who made the job?
>
> C

Tomassone in Bologna.

Just for inf: The Epi Black Beauty does NOT have ebony as fingerboard, but stained rosewood.

About fret wire: the softer steel used for the wire, the cheaper it can be manufactured, but the sooner it wears out. So, you have different grades, ranging from Korean made soft steel that wears out in a year, to the Dunlop 6x series of Swedisch stainless steel that can handle 20+ years of abuse.

In general, fret wire on Epiphone guitars wear out in 3 to 4 years (if you play about 5 hours a week), on a Gibson LP it takes about 10 years, and on a Historic Reissue it might even take 20+ years.

But exceptions can happen: I have a totally beat up 1961 Telecaster, and I had to replace the original fret wire about three years ago. So it took 40 years to wear out the wire.

Mathijs

Thanks Juan, Mathijs and everyone else.

JumpingKentFlash