The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

This is the third "Ghost" that I've owned and the 5th Vantage in my life. I just got it in the last 24 hrs. This will have to become my labor of love
Pictures are yet to come of all the ones that I have now. My VP-825 I have called "Smokey" since it smelled like wood smoke when I first got it, but this one I've already started calling this one "Milkshake". It was the absolute dirtiest guitar that I have ever seen It looked like this guy must have been a slide player that used straws from chocolate milkshakes as his slide of choice.
I'm sure that I'll be putting a lot of questions up here re: repairs and requests for O.E. replacement parts. It has one busted volume pot and the knob is a.w.o.l. the back cover is repleced with an acrylic see through one, the bridge pick up has been replaced with a Dimarzio and the G tuning head is broken.
Best of all the fretboard is gouged out throughout the first position and the frets look like washboards.
Labor of love like I said and great learning experience ahead.

what a sad sort I am since I am the only one responding to my own post but anyway.... I called our local big chain dealer to ballpark some things on "Milkshake" and was told about $600 to replace frets and finger board with a 2 year wait before the guy would even touch it. What does anyone know about doing this myself and is this dealer guy just pulling my chain?

Sorry no one responded to your post - I must have missed it first time around.

Can you post a picture of this guitar - It always helps to see what you are trying describe with words.

$600 for a fingerboard replacement and fret job is really expensive - search out a local luthier for this kind of work.

A close up photo of the affected area would really be helpful.

Here is a link that will give you a good idea as to what is involved in a fret board replacement. NOT really a do it yourselfer type job.

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier ... board.html

The fretboard damage is generally more cosmetic than functional. If mine were damaged I would want to replace it. But if you are just interested in making it back into a player with least cost, maybe just a fret leveling would suffice. That is usually less than $100 - - I think. However if the frets are massively worn a fret leveling may not work out.

Anyway - - get us a photo to look at!

A helluva job there Would be fun to try it, but it would have to be on a non-rescue guitar in a good wood-workshop the first time!!

I agree the $600 for fingerboard replacement and re-fret seems awfully high. I would have expected more in the range of $300 or a little more. It kinda sounds like they did not want to do it.

There's only a little more involved since it is a set neck guitar, but if the adhesive used between neck and fingerboard is not hide based, it can be a real adventure removing it without a milling machine or skilled use of a diamond wire saw. Most ofen a pre-cut fingerboard is installed and will feel a bit different than the stock. A skilled luthier can duplicate the exact radius and side profile but may be a bit more expensive.

Unless the fingerboard is really dished it may be possible to steam some of it out. Most of the time a re-fret (which in your case may only be a partial, or simply level and re-crown) brings the guitar back to decent playable condition. If you have pictures of the damage can you either post links to them or toss them my way to get an idea of the damage? I'll put them up here on the site.

Many of the giutars I now have had some degree of faceting on the frets (some rather bad) but it has not been necessary to re-fret any of them so far. A spot level partway up the fingerboard and re-crown usually does the trick.

All in all it may be a good idea to get a numer of opinions.

I'm glad to hear that $600. sounds beyond reason on the fret board replacement. I am intending to get my pictures up here real soon. But this has to be at a time when my wife can bale me out on the techno end!!
has anyone seen that blue Vantage 600 series now on Ebay?!!!!
the price is only in the $150's and the reserve is already met. I'm not bidding this go 'round so don't be affraid that you'll ace me out by bidding.
If one of you gets it I'd love to hear about it.

Well I have just begun, but this is what I see now. I played with the bridge and saddle heights to try to eliminate some of the buzz which was all up and down the neck . This didn't work well at all so now my thoughts took me to the land of "Trussrod". There my trusty partner Allen Key (not to be confused with Allan Keyes although I like him too) and I were greeted by an unemployed gentleman named "Rod". I mean UNEMPLOYED this guy had no load that he was under. Mr. Key took Rod aound for a bit and found work for him. Now the fret buzz has been reduced to only a few frets on each string. So there is hope that after a few more meetings Allen, Rod, and I will one day be able to sit down and enjoy a Milkshake together although we may have to invite the Refret family along in the end.

Well Vantageman - - Everything you wrote IS terribly witty. One thing is for sure - - I have been craving a chocolate malt for several weeks now.

Here is my view on the order of getting a guitar playable.

1 Take off the strings.

2. Is the neck straight? Or at least slightly bowed in (not bowed out). Usually a truss rod adjustment (as you have found) will cure this. Just make MINOR adjustments because you definately do NOT want to mess up your rod!!!!!!!!! I took a straight edge ruler (about 18 inches) and filed notches were the frets would be so that the ruler would lie flat on the fingerboard (not the frets). Now you want to adjust the truss rod until the ruler lies as totally flat as possible on the center of the fingerboard.

3. Fret filing. If the frets are not too far gone already it's time to do a fret filing. IF YOU DONT FEEL COMFORTABLE DOING THIS - - DONT DO IT. YOU COULD SCREW UP EVERYTHING. Cover everything like the pickups so they don't collect metal filings etc. I mask off all the finger board area and the nut to protect them. A flat 6 inch fine tooth file mounted to the edge of a 3/4 in piece of wood works nicely. Carefully, Slowly, and evenly, with gentle pressure file up and down the frets. Make sure each area gets equal amount of filing until most of the worn areas are gone. (I don't usually get rid of all the worn areas because I don't want to take off too much fret!!)

4. Fret polishing. I follow up the filing with 400 grit silicon carbide paper mounted to a sanding block. I have a piece of rubber between the block and the paper to kind of let it form to the radius profile of the frets. I put a LITTLE bit of WD-40 on the paper and polish up and down from nut to pickup until it just takes off the filing marks.

5. Fret crowning. Now here is where I am a little different. The finger board is still thoroughly masked off. I take 600 grit paper and with the soft pad of my finger, I polish the fret back and forth from 1st string to 6th string. The soft pad of my finger sort of rounds off the sharp edges of the fret and works really well. I know there are crowning files out there but this works for me. Follow it up with a little 800 grit for a nice shine. I even use 1200 grit. Boy are they shiny when you are done.

6. Remove all the masking and restring the guitar.

7. Nut slots. If the slots are too deep the string will buzz on the first fret. If they are not deep enough the guitar can be pretty miserable to play. Suffice it to say the slot should be cut so that the string is a few milli-inches higher than the first fret. It is hard to explain, so here is a link to one man's opinion. I tend to agree. http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Musicia ... ction.html

8. Once you are happy with your nut, tune your guitar to pitch and readjust the truss rod.

9. Saddle height and intonation. Adjust the saddles for your style of play. Generally the 6th string will be adjusted higher than the 1st because the larger gage of the string the "bigger" the string vibrates. The profile of the saddles will resemble the radius of the fingerboard and frets. The intonation is set using a good guitar tuner (or a better ear than I have). The 12th fret harmonic should be exactly the same pitch as pressing on the 12th fret and playing. Adjusting the forward and backward motion of the saddle will correct the differences.

Well that's my diatribe for now. PLEASE be careful doing this kind of work. Unless you are prepared for the worst.

Willbo, you sound so much like me it's scary!

There's a few tricks that might make things just a bit less difficult.

When crowning, although I have used just sandpaper and fingertip, I have actually gotten better results with a crowning file. StewMac carries some inexpensive ones which are fine for general use. For touch up purposes the sandpaper method is just fine, but without spot checking as you go, it is quite easy to undo the leveling done previously. As little as a .003" difference between frets can cause undue string rattle. Here's the workaround:

As Willbo stated, it's important to have the fingerboard straight, and keep it straight during this process or it's all for naught. Some luthiers and shops use burlap sacks loaded with buck shot, others a jig, but you can get by with a small pillow case loaded with play sand. Nest the neck into the sack/pillow case until as much of the back of the neck is supported. It helps to check the fingerboard several times as you work to avoid mishap.

You may want to keep in mind that if a neck is radically bowed either way it sometimes takes a while for the neck to settle into the new truss tension. The harder the wood, the slower it responds to truss adjustments.

I use a sharpie (green, seems to be most visible for me) to "paint" the entire top of the fret before leveling. This way I can tell which frets the file or sandpaper has "touched" and which ones it hasn't. I can stop as soon as the very tops of the lowest frets have been lightly grazed and there is no need to go any further. Badly faceted frets require a little pre-crowning before this process.

I use both files and flat straight edges with 3M Gold adhesive back 220 grit sandpaper. For the level of precision needed here there's no need for micro-flat surfaces. I get by with good quality bubble levels and let the wieght of the level apply the pressure needed. Take things slow here, a little is a lot. Remember, there are more frets towards the upper registers so things go slow here and relatively quickly towards the nut. Keep a close eye on the sharpie painted on the tops of the frets!

Another thing you want to do is follow the radius of the fingerboard. A tip that Dan Erlewine offers is to follow the path of the strings as you draw back and forth on the file/leveling block/bar. This helps maintian the radius and also helps prevent "flat tracks" and a distorted radius down the fingerboard.

Once the tops of the frets are all at least lightly grazed you can crown them. Most often I use a jumbo crowning file as the wider the crown radius the longer it lasts between re-crownings. Again, I paint the tops of the frets with the sharpie. This time I want to file the fret until there is only a narrow strip of sharpie left across the tops of the frets. This protects the leveling that was just done and you know when to stop on any particular fret. It's IMPORTANT to keep the file free of filings! Otherwise you get a false indication as the filings themselves will scrape away the sharpie indicator marks. I use an old toothbrush to keep the filings off the file and fingerboard while I am working and usually "brush" after every second or third stroke.

Some frets will require more than others. Once the frets are crowned with only a small strip of sharpie left along the top edge you can finish with fine sandpaper. I use wet-dry automotive sandpaper for this as it holds up a little better than the garden variety wood/paint sandpaper.

This sounds like a whole lot of trouble, but if you look closely at the point where the string makes contact with the fret on a fingered string, you'll see that on properly crowned frets the string rests just behind the top of the crown. Closer on heavy guage strings, and farther back the lighter you go. If the the string rests too far foreward (the crown appears lobed towards the bridge) the string's pitch will be falsely sharp, and conversely the pitch will be falsely flat in relation to open strings and strings fretted close by. Even a 1/64" variance between frets can make a difference to the disciminating ear. Don't believe me? Try moving all your saddles in opposite directions to each other only 1/64" and then try playing chords on the upper registers!

Many people will not notice this, but I have had jazz and metal playing customers that could. I almost always cringed when they brought me guitars for fret work. One metal player's guitars all have either ebony or ebonite fingerboards which invarialby adds to the "fun".

Gibons used a "flat" crown on some of their SGs and LPs, and I believe the trademark name for it was "fretless wonder frets". The crown was flat across the top and only the edges were radiused which means the string rested on the back (nut side) of the frets. I am pretty sure Gibson compensated for this in the placement of the nut in the scale.

The most important things to keep in mind whether you are doing a light re-crown, spot-level, or full level/re-fret is to TAKE YOUR TIME! Don't get in a rush. The patience will pay off in the long run.

Hey Willbo, maybe we ought to open a shop! I have found a way to take the work out of cutting nut slot depth if you are interested. You'd probably freak if you know how simple it is, and you are probably pitching the tool I use!