...not gonna be very noticeable.
"Noticeable" is the key here. There are plenty of guitars that make people really happy that aren't set up well. But once you've played several guitars with absolutely perfect setups, you note that something feels... wrong, about the vast majority of guitars out there. And then if you have to opportunity to work with somebody that knows what they're doing, you can see and feel the difference.
One of the main reasons Ibanez, Schecter & ESP, Tokai and others came on so strong in the 1980's was because they were sending out guitars with pretty darn good fretwork - and even into the beginning of this century, Fender was sending out the Yngwie Malmsteen signature model with a scalloped fretboard and giant "6000" bass frets - completely unfinished. Not just the sharp corners, they have ridges on top and they're roughly square in cross section. And every single $300 - $800 Schecter & Ibby in the store kicked it's ass...
I have to believe that the Japanese were running some kind of early version of the Plek machines - not computer-based, but some kind(s) of machine that leveled, crowned and de-fanged them. Around 2000, 2001 I took a Ibanez GAX-something guitar in trade for some lessons, The frets were perfect. I mean, just consistent little hotdog ends all the way up and back, perfectly leveled. I've seem other ones, same factory & time period that weren't so good, but they were at least adequate. And everybody knows that the Fender "Custom" Shop just pulls some pretty wood off the regular production line, subs in some pickups made with different kinds of plastic & wire - and then does real bangin' job of the frets, maybe $150 worth at their wages - then sells it for
at least $1500 more. A purdy-decent "ROI" or "Return on Investment", yuppers.
But if it doesn't matter to you, that's fine too. Your hands get tired quicker, you don't enjoy playing it as much so you quite sooner and you don't even know why - but it's better for the neighbors! I just cringe when I see someone saying "My Warmoth neck was perfect! The frets didn't need a thing!" Cause Warmoth doesn't finish their frets, they tell you so quite explicitly. But they're caught between a rock & a hard place there, they do not want to tell kids they'll have to spend another $100 to get the neck right (or buy Dan Erlewine's "Guitar Player Repair Guide", visit Frank Ford's site and take the careful steps to figure it out yourself. But only if your brain works that way.
I learned to do frets out of necessity, I was "broke but handy with tools", so to speak. And it's
kind of fun, if you can think small (and SEE small, my single best guitar tool is my Optivisor). Of course the perfectionism needed to do detail stuff is now seen as some kind of defect. Now that Mommy is stuffing Junior full of Prozac and Thorazine analogs because he's being all sorts of curious and noisy and childish, it's sketchy to see where the next generation of people who are good at much of anything tedious will come from.
arty07:
