When do I need a fret dress?

HAL9000

My Telecaster is twenty years old and for its first ten years was my only guitar. Changed the strings earlier today and realised that a few frets have some quite visible divots in them. To be honest they look worse than they feel but I’m still slightly concerned. If I listen very carefully indeed (I don’t think I’m imagining it) I can hear that the strings sound slightly less lively at those frets - presumably because the string is being pressed slightly closer to the fret above and so can’t ring out quite so well if that makes sense. I don’t want to shell out for a fret dress if it’s not really necessary. Also, since this particular instrument has sentimental value I’d be devastated if the work wasn’t done well. 

Funkfingers

If the divots cause your strings to rattle against a fret higher up the neck, it is time for either the worn fret to be replaced or the whole lot to receive attention.

BillDL

Would it be possible to try and take a couple of good close-up photos of the most "divoted" frets?

darthed1981

To go to the fret ball of course...

ICBM

Thankfully a fret dress is harder to screw up than a refret, although far from impossible...

The good news is that fret wear almost always looks worse than it actually is, and that a good dress and re-crown will often leave the frets feeling no lower than they do now, or even seeming higher - which is counterintuitive but is really true.

I prefer to do a minimum-metal-removal job, which I would call a 'tapered dress', although I'm not sure if this is a common term - what it means is taking off the least metal possible consistent with returning the fret tops to a straight line up the neck, if that makes sense. The result is the most height reduction at the nut end and none at the top frets, which sounds as if it should be wrong but actually produces a great-playing neck, in a similar way as a compound-radius fingerboard does, by giving lower frets and easy chord playing at the nut end, but plenty of fret height for bends further up the neck.

So ask how the tech does the job, basically - even more important is properly re-crowning and polishing, not leaving the fret tops flat or rough... which are always the sign of a bad job by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

HAL9000

BillDL said:

Would it be possible to try and take a couple of good close-up photos of the most "divoted" frets?

Here we go…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/photos/share/xq9kxpwHMlXb6DWp9kZ64QOZhQwtOwc5sHWYBagAj8

https://www.amazon.co.uk/photos/share/mjYLqjMcNj1ocnNawOwj4oRTU0K9AksfOpYUaXHYmkM

Sharky77

I would get a fret dress on those personally. Where are you based? Plenty of great luthiers around, just do your homework/ask for recommendations on here

Funkfingers

+1. Sort it.

ICBM

Those aren’t bad at all - a light fret dress will fix them.

HAL9000

Sharky77 said:

I would get a fret dress on those personally. Where are you based? Plenty of great luthiers around, just do your homework/ask for recommendations on here

I’m in Wiltshire. Wilts Guitar Repair in Trowbridge seems to get very good reviews, but happy to hear anyone else’s recommendations.

bluecat

Wow I thought mine were getting bad on my 25 year old Strat, looking at the pics there is years of playing left in mine.

HAL9000

I’ve now got a new excuse for buying more guitars - by owning more I’m spreading any fret wear across multiple guitars so that they’ll last longer ;-)

randella

Those are not so bad at all, when you've got dings that are so deep the top of the fret is approaching flush with the rosewood you might have to have a rethink

57Deluxe

is not that difficult to dress them yourself. A small file and some wet and dry is all you need. Little at a time application and a nice polish to finish with some Brasso.

OilCityPickups

darthed1981 said:

To go to the fret ball of course...

I was about to say cos you wouldn't want to be caught out in your fret underwear ... 

BillDL

Although those divots look really deep, the almost straight-on photo from above is a bit deceptive and tends to exaggerate the depth a bit.  When you look carefully at them in relation to the remainder of the fret below them, the divots are really just down to the shoulders of where the rounded crown would start.  Maybe a bit less than a quarter into the total height of the fret I suppose.  That's common wear on acoustics down in the first 5 frets and usually on the 4 high strings where all the open chords are played the most often, but you get it on electrics in the lower frets too, usually on the 3 high unwound strings.

What I would look at before making a decision about what to do or have done would be how far up the neck the divots are pretty noticeable to that kind of extent.  If they are restricted to the first 5 or 6 frets and the rest of the frets up the neck are pretty free of divots, but maybe just flattened a bit or worn into wider and shallower depressions from bending strings, then the best longer term solution might be a partial refret using fret wire that's the same width and as tall as or marginally taller than the old frets.  Any excess height can then be reduced on the new 5 or 6 frets by levelling them with a short sanding beam or file, then a fine "skim" over all of the frets and a recrown would ensure thay are all nice and level.

It does look as though you still have a fair amount of height left on the frets though, so a complete level and recrown may be the cheapest, least invasive, and perfectly satisfactory solution.  In the photo of your frets above imagine a thin line down the middle of the fret and it gives you an idea how wide the flattened area is.  If you were to just recrown them as they are so that the new apex removed the sharp edges of the flattened tops, the length of the divots themselves would then be narrower.  When you visualise that, you can then get an idea of how little metal would actually have to be filed off the fret during a level to remove the divots before recrowning the frets.

I had a guitar that was pretty much as you photographed up to about the 7th fret on the 3 unwound strings and the majority of the remaining frets had noticeable shallow troughs from bending and flattened crowns.  When fretted at the deeper divots the strings were not ringing as well as they should have been over the next few frets. I could also feel those strings catching in their divots when I bent them around the 5th to 7th frets.  I had compensated with a marginally higher action and a tiny bit more neck relief, but had resigned myself to a full refret.  I decided to just have a go and see whether a level and recrown would give me good enough playability for a good while to come and I am pretty pleased that it did. Although I would class myself as fully competent with fretwork, I am not as expert as most professionals that are doing this on a regular basis, so I would suggest you allow a proper tech or luthier have a look at the frets in real life to see whether a level and crown would be possible without removing too much metal. [EDIT: ICBM has said it would - I missed that - so I would tend to trust his expert opinion]

HAL9000

Genuine thanks for all your replies and especially for @ICBM and BillDL ’s more comprehensive answers. A lot of useful information there. I’ve got a lot going on right now but will definitely be looking at getting this sorted next month. Thanks again.

rlw

That guitar is worn out and you need a new one.

SPECTRUM001

ICBM said:

Thankfully a fret dress is harder to screw up than a refret, although far from impossible...

The good news is that fret wear almost always looks worse than it actually is, and that a good dress and re-crown will often leave the frets feeling no lower than they do now, or even seeming higher - which is counterintuitive but is really true.

I prefer to do a minimum-metal-removal job, which I would call a 'tapered dress', although I'm not sure if this is a common term - what it means is taking off the least metal possible consistent with returning the fret tops to a straight line up the neck, if that makes sense. The result is the most height reduction at the nut end and none at the top frets, which sounds as if it should be wrong but actually produces a great-playing neck, in a similar way as a compound-radius fingerboard does, by giving lower frets and easy chord playing at the nut end, but plenty of fret height for bends further up the neck.

So ask how the tech does the job, basically - even more important is properly re-crowning and polishing, not leaving the fret tops flat or rough... which are always the sign of a bad job by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

@ICBM - that's a very interesting read. Do you need to change the neck angle to accommodate the differential fret height (ie or would the action be higher on the nut end of the neck ?) ?

SteveRobinson

You just drop the nut slots to suit the lower frets at that end. 

ICBM

SteveRobinson said:

You just drop the nut slots to suit the lower frets at that end. 

And also slight counterintuitively, you may need to *raise* the bridge very slightly. This usually produces a better-playing guitar though.