Telecaster Custom Rejuvination

[davegardner0]

Assembled! Still have to cut the nut slots and set everything up, but I love the look. And it sounds great!!!



One potentially weird thing I ran into, though, is that the frets feel VERY rough to play on, especially when bending. I took a close look, and it seems like the frets were leveled and crowned, but never sanded/polished after crowning to get rid of the little bit of rough metal at the top of the fret that the crowning file doesn't touch. Is this typical for a Warmoth neck? I'm a little surprised as I didn't think Warmoth did any fret dressing/leveling. And I'm not looking forward to fixing this as they're stainless frets.

(click for a bigger view)

 

[Logrinn]

Perhaps it's part of they levelling the frets (sanding in the direction of the neck would make those micro grooves I would think).
As you'll play - and bend them strings - the strings themselves will take care of it I imagine.

 

[stratamania]

You need to take that out, remember the frets are stainless not nickel and less likely to wear away with play.

I don't know how those marks got on your frets, but a few years ago when I leveled stainless for the first time and skipped a couple of grits I felt the same thing on some frets. Here is the post below about it, if you scroll past the trem claw discussion. (That was a lesson learned and also just before I started wearing spectacles)

http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=22445.msg338072#msg338072

So I would say arm yourself with some masking tape and a range of good quality abrasive paper in a series of grits and get to it. Because otherwise it just won't feel smooth like stainless should.

 

[davegardner0]

You're thinking along the same lines as me. I've done this on other guitars and it wasn't too too bad. With the stainless frets everything just takes long, but the same procedure can be followed, right?

 

[stratamania]

You're thinking along the same lines as me. I've done this on other guitars and it wasn't too too bad. With the stainless frets everything just takes long, but the same procedure can be followed, right?

Yes, it's the same procedure. Don't skip any grits as that is important, and don't move to a finer grit until the marks from the previous ones have gone.

I started doing a variation of a method Freddy Garzek posted on Youtube. Except I like to wear rubber gloves and wrap the paper around a large eraser or similar to save my fingers. I also like to use Micromesh after 1500.

https://youtu.be/_v6IvrU8gqw?t=14m3s

 

[Cagey]

Stainless is pretty hard, so it fights being cleaned up. After leveling, I use a crowning file to restore the crowns to the frets, then I use a series of strips cut from from sheets of polishing paper in progressively finer grits. Wrap the coarsest (400 grit) around the edge of the crowning file, and sorta go through the crowning exercise again. Keep moving up a grade until you're at about 1200 grit, and the frets will be better than most OEM guitars. Since you're cutting from side to side instead of lengthwise, you don't end up with longitudinal scratches that make the guitar feel like your bending your strings across an abrasive instead of a fret. Get out the micromesh, and go as far as you like with that, then finally polish with some metal polish like Maas. Makes for for mirror-like frets that play so slick it feel like you've gone down a gauge set in strings.

 

[davegardner0]

Got it, I'll let you know how the fret smoothing / polishing goes. In the mean time though the guitar is sounding great. This huge neck is crazy! It's the biggest I've ever had so it's taking some getting used to, but having enough room on the fretboard is pretty cool.

 

[BigSteve22]

......finally polish with some metal polish like Maas. Makes for for mirror-like frets that play so slick it feel like you've gone down a gauge set in strings

I like a felt wheel on my Dremel with a little jewelers rouge, same effect, less elbow grease.  :glasses9:

 

[Cagey]

I used to do something similar, but I didn't like the heating effect the dremel had on the frets, so I went back to doing it by hand. By the time I get to the point where I'm ready to use polish, they don't need much attention anyway.

 

[davegardner0]

Last night I finally got the time + patience to sit down and fix these frets. I had to start with 220 grit sandpaper to get the marks out of the frets (took forever!), then went to 320, then Stew-Mac fret erasers from 400-8000. Then some Simichrome polish + my dremel's polishing cloth wheel to shine things up.



WOW these stainless frets feel like glass to bend strings on! I absolutely see the appeal now. And it's pretty cool knowing that even though I chose the skinnier size, they won't flatten out very quickly with playing.




So next I'm thinking about potential bridge upgrades to this guitar. I really like how the guitar is sounding and playing, but I know the cheap Squier saddles are probably mystery metal, meaning that some steel or brass saddles could improve the tone even more. I think my options are to either get better saddles for the existing bridge, or to try mounting something like one of those short ashtray bridges with the brass cylinder saddles. First I need to look at where the bridge mounting and string thru holes are compared to any potential bridges. The agathis wood body on this guitar is pretty soft, so even though I'd be open to drilling new holes, I think it would be a bad idea to drill new holes anywhere near an existing hole, otherwise the whole bridge area could potentially fall apart.

 

[Cagey]

Frets look great! Nice thing, too, is that feeling of "playing on glass" tends to stay. You get used to those frets and you're spoiled. Everything else you pick up and play feels somehow defective, like it needs work or something.

Is that a superwide neck? Looks like a helluva lotta space open from the E to the edge of the fretboard.

 

[Hendrix]

Very nice tuners and build  :headbang:

 

[davegardner0]

Is that a superwide neck? Looks like a helluva lotta space open from the E to the edge of the fretboard.

It's not a superwide. But it is a 1 3/4" nut with the "narrow" imported bridge string spacing. Plus since its a cheap squier body the bridge isn't mounted 100% on the body/ neck centerline.

The photo angle greatly exaggerates the space on the low e side though. For instance i havent felt the high e wanting to fall off the board at all. Still though I'd really like to center the bridge but i think my options are limited since the body wood is so soft.  I'm afraid to drill more holes and I'm afraid to use a top loader bridge.

On a side note what's with fender and the misaligned hardtail bridges? I used to have a 72 Tele custom RI and it was wayyyy worse than this guitar. It was hard to play solos as the high e would fall right off the fretboard. I've heard many other of these guitars have the same issue. Don't they have a jig for drilling the holes in the factory?

 

[Cagey]

Fender has long been a sort of "hammer to fit, paint to match" kind of builder. I suspect that's one of the reasons they came up with the "custom shop". It's not that anything is particularly custom, but the caliber and skill level of people they have working in that area is higher than it is on the full-tilt boogie assembly line.

With neck/string alignment, sometimes if you loosen the neck attachment screws a turn or two and give the neck a pull in the direction it needs to go to line things up, then retighten the screws, that'll get you where you need to be.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Stainless is pretty hard, so it fights being cleaned up. After leveling, I use a crowning file to restore the crowns to the frets, then I use a series of strips cut from from sheets of polishing paper in progressively finer grits. Wrap the coarsest (400 grit) around the edge of the crowning file, and sorta go through the crowning exercise again. Keep moving up a grade until you're at about 1200 grit, and the frets will be better than most OEM guitars. Since you're cutting from side to side instead of lengthwise, you don't end up with longitudinal scratches that make the guitar feel like your bending your strings across an abrasive instead of a fret. Get out the micromesh, and go as far as you like with that, then finally polish with some metal polish like Maas. Makes for for mirror-like frets that play so slick it feel like you've gone down a gauge set in strings.

I wonder if I've been giving too much love to nickel frets as I polish down to 12000 using mirror glaze ever so slightly.

I haven't crowned any SS yet.

 

[Cagey]

Polishing is always good, but it's almost a waste of time on nickel/silver as it wears so quickly. Looks good coming off the bench, though. Polish stainless, and it stays polished.

Crowning stainless isn't really any different than nickel/silver, it's just a little more time-consuming. Where you might use 1 - 3 strokes to make a difference on the soft stuff, you might use 7-10 on stainless. Nice part about that is it makes it more difficult to make mistakes. You're much less likely to overcut, since it takes more work to do it. Where it gets sketchy is when you give a neck with nickel/silver frets on it to someone like me who does almost exclusively stainless/EVO. I have to back off quite a bit, because if I treat the N/S parts like I do the SS, I'll just eat the fret.

 

[davegardner0]

Crowning stainless isn't really any different than nickel/silver, it's just a little more time-consuming. Where you might use 1 - 3 strokes to make a difference on the soft stuff, you might use 7-10 on stainless. Nice part about that is it makes it more difficult to make mistakes. You're much less likely to overcut, since it takes more work to do it. Where it gets sketchy is when you give a neck with nickel/silver frets on it to someone like me who does almost exclusively stainless/EVO. I have to back off quite a bit, because if I treat the N/S parts like I do the SS, I'll just eat the fret.

It was 80 strokes per fret with 220 sandpaper on this neck, for instance, to remove the scratches on the frets that you can see a few posts back. I think with nickel frets i could have removed them with 400 grit in half the time. So i can see if you're 'calibrated' to working with stainless you'd obliterate nickel frets. It always surprises me how soft nickel frets are, close to aluminum even.

 

[Cagey]

Wow. Did you buy that neck new from Warmoth? I went back up-thread and looked at the frets before you did anything to them, and even from that limited view they don't look like anything I've ever seen come out of Warmoth, and I've seen a lot of their work. That looks like somebody started to work on the frets, realized they'd bit off more than they could chew, then gave up early on. Pretty bad off. Warmoth doesn't level, crown, dress or polish the frets they install; they install 'em and bevel the ends, and that's it, so I have no idea how those could have been in the shape they were in. No wonder you had to work so hard to clean 'em up.

 

[davegardner0]

Yes I absolutely bought the neck from Warmoth and that is how the frets looked out of the box. I was as surprised as you are since I had also heard that Warmoth doesn't do any fret work. I agree, it looks like somebody leveled the frets (sanding along the length of the neck) but then didn't stay on each grit long enough when crowning and polishing. The frets were nice and shiny aside from the scratches, so it does seem like somebody went through the grits but didn't stay on the first one long enough (which I can say from personal experience needed to be super long ).

Is it worth emailing Warmoth about it? I already fixed the frets, and the neck arrived from the factory last December, so it's kind of a while ago at this point. But still it was kind of annoying...

 

[Cagey]

I think it would be worth at least having a conversation with them about what they do to frets before shipping, using yours as an example, if for no other reason than to help those coming behind you. Be good for future reference. Maybe they're doing more to them these days than they used to, but aren't any good at it. Seems hard to believe, but clearly there's evidence somebody was playing around who left the thing in a less than useful state.