This lovely Tokai Stratocaster was brought in for a refret by one of our regular customers. We had previously worked on this guitar, with a min restoration bringing it back to original spec, and had advised at the time that a refret would be needed before too long.
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The old frets were very flat, this made the removal of the frets tricky, especially with the 30+ year old aged lacquer surrounding them! The slots were then cleaned and the board prepped for the new frets.
We managed to source some fretwire that matched the profile of the original fretwire when it would be been new, as it was not a standard profile that is widely available today.
We managed to source some fretwire that matched the profile of the original fretwire when it would be been new, as it was not a standard profile that is widely available today.
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The new fretwire was installed, and the frets were then levelled using our two stage leveling process, before being recrowned and hand polished. The photos below show the fret dust of the removal of high spots, once the neck is under string tension. This technique preserves the height of the frets, only removing exactly what needs to be removed, definitely needed when dealing with low profile thin vintage fretwire!
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 | Once the frets were recrowned and hand polished, the neck was reassembled to the body. It was unsure if a new nut would be needed due to normally nut slots are cut lower when frets wear down, to avoid high action with the lower worn frets. Fortunately the customer was lucky as due to the fretwire being an exact match to the original factory wire, the original nut was fine, with a lovely low nut action without any further nut work required! The guitar was finished with a setup, as the new taller frets meant that the bridge needed adjustment before it was ready for the customer to collect! |
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