Nut slots too high?

StanleyAccrington

Long story short. Had my Telecaster for 2 years. All ok until very recently. Guitar sounds lousy. I don't have a super douper tuner but the one on my tablet does have a strobe option and seems ok to within one cent. Checked the intonation between open strings and 12 fret and all within a cent either way. But when I fret some frets on predominantly high e and b strings they play sharp...some as much as 5 cents. I'm going to put new set of strings on and hope that is the end of the problem. Maybe I'm fretting strings too heavily although I'm conscious to use as light a touch as possible when checking fretted notes when checking with tuner.

ICBM

Fret each string at the third fret. Look at the gap between the string and the first fret. (Tap the string up and down if the gap is hard to judge.) If the gap is more than a quarter of the string diameter, the nut is too high. Ideally it should be as low as 1/10th of the string diameter.

Yes, this means that the gap should be microscopic on the top E.

StanleyAccrington

May have found the (main) problem. When changing strings the frets around the area where intonation is worse are worn down and have a flattened profile/crown.
I'm a bit hacked off about this as guitar is only 2 years old....I play it rather infrequently...and I'm not much of a string bender. Is there a remedy apart from a refret or new neck?

ESBlonde

You can get the frets dressed. This involves leveling themand putting a new crown profile on them. Typically this can be done two, three or more times before a refret becomes a requirement. Better attended to sooner rather than later.

TJT1979

This! Level and recrown the frets. I have recently done this myself on a couple of guitars.

StanleyAccrington

I'm impressed....and interested to hear more. What tools did you use to get the job done?

ESBlonde

Have a look on yoootoob for the likes of Stewmac doing just this.

In essence a decent long straight edge wrapped in wet n dry run up/down and accross the fingerboard to level the frets evenly. Then with a fine file round over the newly created squar shoulders to form a rounded crown.

If you are patient you can do it with cheap tools readilly available, you can also buy specific straight edges for a given camber/profile and a concave file for crowning.

It takes time and patience hence the reason it costs a professional, but you can do it yourself if you are the handy kind.