My little fret dressing adventure

I just recently got my SX PJ with some plans for modding and tweaking, and first on my list was to get a complete fret leveling. With some truss rod and bridge adjustment it played fairly well, but had lots of buzzing in the higher frets and one of the lower frets was actually visually higher than the others if you turned the neck sideways and looked closely. So I knew a fret job would make a pretty noticable difference. With my other two basses I've had my dad do the leveling, seeing as he is a music store owner and does all the guitar repairs and has done hundreds of fret dresses. This time with the SX I wanted to try it myself. I've seen the way he does it, so I got the leveling equipment from him and went to work. The tools:

A file similar to these, except with a diamond dust filing surface on one side, so no abrasive to attach.
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Two fret crowning files, one finer than the other.
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The procedure:
- Took of the strings and removed the neck.
- Got the nut off by scraping the seams with an X-acto knife and pushing it to the side
- Adjusted the neck so it was completely flat. Went and ate supper to make sure I gave it some time to set in
- Used a towel and some boards to give the length of the neck a flat surface to rest on so it wouldn't bow when pressed on
- Colored the frets with a red sharpie
- Rubbed the long file up and down the neck, moving gradually from side to side, until the areas of red and no red showed which frets were high
- Any frets that had been hit (had any red missing) were colored with a black sharpie
- Used the more coarse crowning file on those frets until the black had just barely disappeared
- Colored the filed frets red again
- Repeated the process of using the flat file followed by the crowning file until the disappearing red showed all frets being equally hit by the file (the 3rd pass in my case, but varies depending on how bad the frets are to begin with)
- Used the finer crowning file after the last pass with the flat file
- Gave the fret edges a little rounding with the crowning file
- Used some fine sand paper (not sure what grit) to smooth out the fret surfaces
- Glued the nut back (just used elmers, I don't want it in place with a death grip in case I need to remove it again), strung it up with some D'Addarios, set my relief and bridge height

And bam, she plays like butter. I can get stupid low action without any buzz. It's a bit of a lengthy process, but definitely worth it in my opinion. And if you do it slow and know what you're doing it's not terribly hard. If you're going to be having multiple basses that you want to have killer playability, I think it's worth the investment to get a few tools and just go for it. If you have even two basses that you want leveled you're already saving money.

Also, as a little side note, something that can make a big difference in playability is the nut. On almost every new bass or guitar, even the higher end ones, the height of the strings at the nut is higher than it has to be. Basically I don't even see height at the nut even being a thing of preference like high/low action is. If the nut is high it's hard to fret notes, if it's low it's easier to fret notes. As long as it's not so low that the string is hitting the first few frets, the nut action will not cause/prevent any buzz up and down the neck like relief and bridge height will, so the nut might as well be as low as it can be to make it easier for your left hand, especially on the lower frets. If all the strings are pretty high at the nut you can just take the whole nut off and sand it down little by little, setting the nut back into place to test it and gluing it when you get it where you like it. And for individual adjustment you can take a skinny metal file and file inside the slots, making sure not to widen them or use a file that will leave them rough.

So there's my story/tutorial-ish thing. As of now I have a $120 bass that plays better than some $1000+ basses. I definitely wouldn't own a bass that didn't go through this same procedure, cause even brand new instruments are gonna have uneven frets and unnecessarily high nuts. So who else here plays doctor with their basses?

ldervish said:

Question: If you set a level on the fretboard when removing the relief, it would be resting on "unlevel" frets. While this might be ok for a rough guide, is it good enough to then proceed with the dressing operation or not? If not, how could you tell the neck was flat BEFORE you started dressing the frets? By sight?

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Now that, my friend, is the question. If the frets are not level it's hard to judge when it's flat. The neck itself could be perfectly flat and a few high frets would make the straight edge rock back and forth, which is what was happening. In that case I just had to kind of see the average space between the frets and the straight edge across the board by sliding pieces of paper inbetween and trying to make a good judgment from there. Also, I hold the neck up to my eye and look from the heel down to the headstock and it's fairly easy to tell if it's bowing that way. The inaccuracy caused by high frets is one of the reasons to use multiple passes with the file rather than just grind away until you hit all the frets. The first time with the file just hit the few high frets. After that it's a little easier to tell how flat the neck is, and if you find that you still need to adjust the rod a bit, you haven't taken so much off that you've screwed yourself.

Now this does make me wonder about the physics of the whole thing. Just hypothetically, if you leveled the frets on a neck with backward bow and then made the neck itself perfectly flat, would the frets form the same shape arc as if you leveled the frets on a perfectly flat neck and then put some forward bow in the neck? Sounds like an icky combination of math and statics.

vindy500 said:

im having trouble finding this tool...

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Those are from stewmac.
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I just used it for a reference picture cause it was the closest looking thing I could find. That wasn't the exact file I used, the one I used already had a rough side on it, whereas the ones on stewmac are just smooth metal and you attach an abrasive. I think they do have metal files too though.

Oh that's cool. I figured something like that might exist.