Les Paul Custom Repair

The customer who brought this Les Paul in for repair complained of fret buzz and a poor tone resulting from fretting on the raised ends of binding that covered the ends of the frets. He asked that I remove the plastic nibs of binding and as much fret as possible to the edge of the fingerboard. I had recently read about making semihemispherical fret ends in an article in the G.A.L. by Harry Fleishman, and decided it was the way to go.

1. Here I am beginning the removal of the frets. Always use caution when removing frets, especially in ebony (as was the case here). It loves to chip out, and this was no exception. Before all was said and done, I had a lot of filling to do to hide some significant chips. I'd like to thank the manufacturer for using so much superglue and making my job that much harder. This was the worst case of chipping out I've experienced in my history of refrets.

2. Here we go with retrueing the fingerboard radius while sanding out the raised plastic that covered the fret ends. It was a compound radius of 12 flowing into 16 after the 12th fret.

3. Moving right along, here the frets are all hammered in after preshaping each fret end by hand. Much care must be taken to fitting the frets to the proper length before installation. It's a labor intensive job, but for those who like it, it is worth the extra cost.

4. Here's a close up of the shaped fret ends. The picture doesn't do the job justice.

5. The finished beauty. This was a nice guitar, and the customer was stoked on his new frets. Happy shreddin' Jimmy!

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