Think fretwork is the hardest part of guitar repair?
Yeah… there’s a reason for that.
A lot of the “trusted” advice out there is flat-out wrong.
Things like:
– Running thin CA glue in the slots before seating frets
– Using pre-radiused frets that match the board radius
Sounds reasonable.
In practice? That’s how you create problems you’ll be chasing for hours.
Frets should be slightly over-radiused, not matched.
Glue? Used wrong, it can turn a simple job into a nightmare.
But here’s the part most people don’t even question:
Your fret rocker.
You trust it… but should you?
More often than not, the answer is no.
Some of the blame falls on tool manufacturers:
– Zinc rockers won’t scratch frets… great.
But the frets will wear the rocker. Now your “straight edge” isn’t straight anymore.
– Stamped rockers can come out of the box with more variance than the tolerance you’re trying to measure.
And here’s the kicker:
It doesn’t take much.
We’re talking about tolerances around 0.001″.
That’s enough to cause buzzing.
So if your tool is off… even slightly…
you’re chasing ghosts.
So what’s the move?
– Don’t buy cheap tools
– Don’t assume expensive tools are accurate
We’ve got multiple StewMac fret rockers in the shop right now… and they don’t agree with each other. One even weighs noticeably more than the other, which tells me manufacturing changed somewhere along the line.
That’s a problem.
So we’re taking it a step further:
We picked up a granite surface plate, fine grit sandpaper and trued these things ourselves.
Learn the stuff not taught anywhere else at Guitar Tech Academy!