Good price for a fret leveling?... and some other stuff too.

[mrkreuzschlitz]

I've had my Jazz bass for a few months now, and in all my tinkering with the setup, I can't get it done very well. A buddy of mine is friends with a shop near me called "Too Many Guitars" in Tucker, GA, and I called Jason up today to get a price on a minor leveling and setup.

$60 for a leveling and setup, and he said that would be able to get my action about as low as I want. Now another shop was gonna charge $100+ at least for the same thing, and a buddy of mine (getting started with being a luither) was gonna charge $80-$100 for it, PLUS setup. Well, it seems like Too Many Guitars has a killer deal. Or so I think; tell me otherwise.

Basically I want low action. I don't have to have it, its just more comfortable to me. I also HATE fret buzz, and I get low action now, but not without some buzzing. Is there anything else I can have done besides some of the dressing to the frets? My buddy is a guitar teacher and highly recommends them, and has taken several of his guitars and his students guitars to get fixed there, so its not some beginner doing the work. Anybody here have any experience with him?

This is my first time taking a bass to a shop to get it set up or modded in any way. I always have tinkered with my setup to get it close to okay, and thats it. What's some general stuff I should know/ask about or for when I get it done? All help is so appreciated.

[JLS]

Are they going to recrown & polish the frets, at that price?

There's a clown who advertises fret levels in my area: " I'm also offering a no-frills fret-mill/polish for $35-45 (NOT including the setup). No-frills means I will NOT crown the frets; while crowning makes them look pretty, in most cases it's more cosmetic than anything else and takes a LONG time, thereby adding substantially to the cost."

WRONG! recrowning frets is not, "cosmetic".

[John Wentzien]

It's worth learnig to do all of the work on your own bass..
Even if you have to pay for an expert to "show you how".
I've saved thousands of dollars over the years having this knowlege.
(Made a few bucks doing other peoples too)

[vejesse]

Originally Posted by JLS

Are they going to recrown & polish the frets, at that price?

There's a clown who advertises fret levels in my area: " I'm also offering a no-frills fret-mill/polish for $35-45 (NOT including the setup). No-frills means I will NOT crown the frets; while crowning makes them look pretty, in most cases it's more cosmetic than anything else and takes a LONG time, thereby adding substantially to the cost."

WRONG! recrowning frets is not, "cosmetic".

There's a guy where I live who does this. I'm not sure he understands that without crowning the frets, all the strings will intonate from the edge of the fret instead of the middle.

[mrkreuzschlitz]

Originally Posted by JLS

Are they going to recrown & polish the frets, at that price?

To be honest, I'm not sure, but I believe so. He gives my buddy the best deals I've ever seen.

Can someone explain all the fret dressing stuff to me? I'm new at that arena of bass talk.

Originally Posted by John Wentzien

It's worth learnig to do all of the work on your own bass..
Even if you have to pay for an expert to "show you how".
I've saved thousands of dollars over the years having this knowlege.
(Made a few bucks doing other peoples too)

I'd LOVE to do this, and I can do a basic setup to get me by, its just I'm a 15 year old with no tools for a leveling. Eventually I'll get what I need to do it, and maybe even intern at a shop. Honestly, I have a feeling that's what I'd do for the rest of my life if I could get a good start learning.

[ByF]

Here's a really abbreviated version of fret dressing and crowning:

Remove the strings and the nut. Adjust the truss rod to make the neck as straight as you can.

Look for loose frets. You press those back in, or glue them if necessary.

Then you use a straight edge to look for high frets that might need special attention, like the area where the neck attaches to the body.

Then you would file or sand all the frets down to the same height-- that's "dressing" the frets. There are several ways to do this; you can use a radius sanding block, a flat file, or a very flat piece of metal with sandpaper stuck to it. The technique you use will give you slightly different results, but basically you are sanding or filing along the length of the neck, with a tool that's long enough to span several frets. You keep going until you've removed at least some metal from every fret.

After you've filed or sanded all the frets, there will be a flat area all the way across the top of every fret. That's bad, because frets are supposed to be rounded at the top, with the highest point of the radius at the middle of the fret. So, you have to restore that radius; that is "re-crowning."

Re-crowning can be done with a small triangular file, working across the neck, and filing both sides of each fret until it is rounded again. Or you can buy a file with a concave shape that files both sides at the same time; that's a lot faster and easier, in my experience.

After the frets are all nicely crowned, you polish them using sucessively finer grades of sandpaper, until they are nice and smooth and shiny again.

After you do that, you may need to lower the slots in the nut, because the frets are lower.

Even if you have all the right tools on hand, it can be kind of tedious and time-consuming, especially the crowning. Even $100 sounds like a good price, if they do a nice job. I've done it myself a few times, but I wouldn't do it for someone else for $100.

Ed

[floydman]

thanks for the round-up Ed