Stewmac Fret Kisser Tool - Worth The Money?

BillDL

Most people will be aware of the Stewart MacDonald (Dan Erlewine) "Fret Kisser" tool that can be used like a fret rocker to selectively level the middle of the three frets spanned using the diamond coated section in the middle of each of the 5 different length sides:

https://www.stewmac.com/luthier-tools-and-supplies/tools-by-job/tools-for-fretting/leveling/stewmac-fret-kisser/

The problem is that these cost $99.99 plus postage unless you are a signed up member to get free shipping.

There are some European resellers that have these for anywhere from a bit over £100:

https://www.bax-shop.co.uk/guitar-tools/stewmac-sm3771-fret-kisser

upwards to silly prices like £150.

Other companies have used the concept of a tool that rests on adjacent frets and files down the fret in the middle until it's level with the frets either side and made their own devices, like the:

• Music Nomad Diamond U-File in different lengths (https://www.guitar.co.uk/musicnomad-u-file-single-fret-leveler-3-pack-mn813),
• Graphite or 3-D printed plastic variants under a variety of brand names like Fertilizer Frtlzr, Fret Tamer by Madgoose 3D, etc, and
• Metal ones shamelessly made to mimic the original Fret Kisser sold on eBay, Amazon, AliExpress, etc with silly product names or none at all and just described as "fret levelling tool".

The Music Nomad files are quite expensive and of a different design than the Fret Kisser but work well because the diamond coating is set into rebates that brings the abrasive surface absolutely level with the flat smooth part of the tool that rests on the adjacent frets.

[EDIT]

The information about the tool below is wrong.  Please see my comment further down the page.

The Frtlzr is flawed in design because it relies on you wrapping fine wet & dry paper around the middle part of the chosen side but has no rebate for the abrasive paper to sit into [YES IT DOES], so you can easily sand off excess height from the fret in the middle making it 0.2mm or thereabouts lower than the adjacent frets.  The Fret Tamer has a rebate to accommodate a strip of abrasive paper, but different brands and grits of abrasive paper vary in thickness, so you could end up filing off excess material or it simply not working as intended.

[END OF EDIT]

I have only bought a couple of the cheapo quality metal Fret Kisser knock-offs, and I have to say that some are being sold at a "reassuringly expensive" price that belies their cheap design and manufacture.  One copy that I bought for £25 from a fairly local timber merchant that also sells guitar hardware and tools is actually well made with nicely chamfered edges to the flat smooth sides and the abrasive section (important to have both chamfered in case you tilt it off vertical), and the surface of the diamond coated middle section is absolutely level with the smooth sides. I don't normally condone rip-offs, but I otherwise wouldn't have justified over £100 for the real one.

One of the other knock-offs that I bought for about £12 has the abrasive surface proud of the level of the smooth flats by exactly 0.15mm.  That doesn't sound like a lot, but for a 1.2mm tall fret that's 12.5% of the height of the bead.  Given the very small amount that usually needs to be taken off the top of a highish fret to bring it level, using this tool would really screw up your frets. I discovered a .... hmmm, I hate the expression, but it's apt ..... hack.  The tough electrical insulation tape I had in the house happens to be 0.15mm thick, so wrapping some around the smooth flat edges brings the surface of the abrasive absolutely level with the new surfaces of the smooth sections and it works very well.  The insulating tape slides along frets very nicely and doesn't wear thin in any great hurry unless the adjacent frets have rough file marks in line with the neck.  When sliding it is silent, so the only sound is scraping of the abrasive until it is level.

I don't advocate this workaround with a cheap quality copy of the Fret Kisser with proud abrasive sections, and neither will I promote the retailer from whom I bought the very good copy because plagiarism is bad, but if you already have one of these cheapos and some insulating tape you can make it work properly.

If I did a lot more work on guitars than I do I would definitely have bought the real thing a long time ago, because no matter how perfectly levelled your frets may be with the neck off the guitar and set straight, you most often will have a high frets after the neck is refitted and under full string tension.

Winny_Pooh

Interesting post. 
I only occasionally (one or twice a year with a new guitar) do this job so alway use a crimson fret rocker,  mark the high spots on the fret with marker & selectively use a fret rounding file to take a bit off, check with fret rocker again and repeat. 

BillDL

Yeah, I used to go up the entire neck with a fret rocker checking at 3 places across the width of the fret while the guitar was strung to pitch and write down the high frets using very slight, slight, moderate, and bad descriptions while noting the fret number and whether the high part was treble, middle, treble and middle, middle only, middle and bass, bass only, treble and bass only, or all across (using abbreviations).  I suppose using a marker might have been easier than writing it down, but I was doing this with the guitar strung up, so not as easy.

If I only had one or two high frets I would raise the strings by a small amount by sliding a thin piece of dowel up under them to a point next to the affected fret and use a fine flat needle file under the raised strings to take off material, then remove the dowel and check with a rocker and by fretting and bending strings.  If I had quite a few I would slacken the strings and keep them in place down the sides of the neck with retainers and use an oversized recrowning file that hits the tops of the smaller gauge frets or a fine diamond file to spot level more than one fret.

Since I bought the good copy of the genuine tool, lowering high frets is a dawdle with the strings on and to full tension.  I just splay the strings over the affected area with my fingers while using the tool on the fret between the splayed strings.

PCG

BillDL said:

…..

The Frtlzr is flawed in design because it relies on you wrapping fine wet & dry paper around the middle part of the chosen side but has no rebate for the abrasive paper to sit into, so you can easily sand off excess height from the fret in the middle making it 0.2mm or thereabouts lower than the adjacent frets.  The Fret Tamer has a rebate to accommodate a strip of abrasive paper, but different brands and grits of abrasive paper vary in thickness, so you could end up filing off excess material or it simply not working as intended.

….

I just bought a Frtlzr the other day.  I haven’t used it yet but can confirm that it does have a recess on all sides to accept the wet & dry paper and keep it level.  It also comes with enough paper of the correct thickness to last me a lifetime! Perhaps the design has changed since you used but it’s not an issue now if it was before.

BillDL

Aaah, that's good to know @PCG.   I was pretty sure that when they were first sold they didn't have that rebate, and I did zoom in really closely on their own website photos to have a good look at it.  I was wrong.  In view of what you said about the rebates for the thickness of the supplied sandpaper I went looking for images of it again, and I can see those rebates now thatI look closely:

You can actually see them much more clearly with the angle of the light right at the start of THIS YouTube video from 2 years ago.  I have added a note to my previous comments criticising the tool.  I'm glad you posted this info.

fretmeister

I have an annoying high fret on a bass and I’ve been thinking about these sorts of tools.

I’m trying to avoid spending that sort of money for 1 fret though!

BillDL

@fretmeister.

£15 would buy a "Fret Tamer", but I have no idea how precise it is:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/157500999674

£30 would buy you the FRTLZR tool that I'm sure is more precise than the above tool, and perhaps @PCG could let us / you know how well it worked for him / her.  I actually feel quite bad for having previously been critical of this tool when the mistake was mine for not having looked closely enough at the zoomed-in photos of it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FRTLZR-Fretshaper-Leveling-Maintenance-Leveller/dp/B0DPLLT44Q

If the fret is only a gnat's whisker high and you are prepared to improvise a tool, some P420 or P400 wet and dry paper wrapped around a lollipop stick can be used along the length of the fret as long as you only do half a dozen rubs then check, and keep doing so until you have the fret lowered enough.  You would obviously want to tape off the fretboard either side of the high fret.  I find electrical insulation tape is much more resilient against sandpaper and fine files than the likes of masking tape.  Even using it along the length of the fret like this you can still concentrate the filing on a localised area of the fret that is the highest because of the radius of the fret.

When you feel that you are getting quite close to the correct fret height you can start using your sanding stick more along the sides of the fret than directly on the top and this can help to re-establish the crown to an extent.  After you get to the correct height, using a bit of 400 grit wet & dry paper under your finger or thumb and rubbing it at an angle in against each side of the fret will usually give you an acceptable crown again and you then just polish the fret with much finer paper like P1500.

axisus

I think Stew Mac is always way too expensive. I bought a cheap fret rocker and just fix the traditional way.

ICBM

axisus said:

I think Stew Mac is always way too expensive. I bought a cheap fret rocker and just fix the traditional way.

This. They have some brilliant tools that make a job quick and easy, but unless you’re doing these jobs a lot and charging by the hour, they’re just too expensive.

You can easily lower a high fret by hand, checking often with a standard straight edge.

The only StewMac tool I’ve got that I can think of which definitely does the job better and more accurately than the manual way is the one for fitting 10mm machineheads to 8mm holes without removing more wood than necessary. The kit for rethreading a stripped truss rod would be worth it too, but you’d probably only ever need it a couple of times even as a professional repairer.

BillDL

axisus said:

I think Stew Mac is always way too expensive. I bought a cheap fret rocker and just fix the traditional way.

Have you checked your cheap fret rocker against a good quality straightedge or something else known to be absolutely straight while looking for slivers of light shining underneath the edges?

I misplaced my good quality more expensive one and bought a cheap one to do a fret level until I eventually found my good one.  I had quite a frustrating time with the guitar where I levelled my frets with a metal beam that always gives me very accurate results, yet when I then checked it with the fret rocker it had what seemed to be some high frets and some low frets.  When I sussed what was going on I held the rocker up against a good quality straightedge and three of the different length sides each had a different issue, with one side having an offset (along the length and also across the width) concave in the middle, another had a convex (or rounded up ends), and another has a wavy edge that varied in wave across the witch of the edge.  It would hardly have been worth it in commercial terms, especially as I then found my good rocker, but I stuck some silicon carbide sandpaper down on a thick slab of glass and filed all the sides straight as you would do with a nut or saddle,  and I added proper chamfers to the edges of all sides, so I have a spare now.  I'm not saying all cheap fret rockers will have these issues, but there's a stronger likelihood.

fretmeister

BillDL said:

@fretmeister.

£15 would buy a "Fret Tamer", but I have no idea how precise it is:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/157500999674

£30 would buy you the FRTLZR tool that I'm sure is more precise than the above tool, and perhaps @PCG could let us / you know how well it worked for him / her.  I actually feel quite bad for having previously been critical of this tool when the mistake was mine for not having looked closely enough at the zoomed-in photos of it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FRTLZR-Fretshaper-Leveling-Maintenance-Leveller/dp/B0DPLLT44Q

If the fret is only a gnat's whisker high and you are prepared to improvise a tool, some P420 or P400 wet and dry paper wrapped around a lollipop stick can be used along the length of the fret as long as you only do half a dozen rubs then check, and keep doing so until you have the fret lowered enough.  You would obviously want to tape off the fretboard either side of the high fret.  I find electrical insulation tape is much more resilient against sandpaper and fine files than the likes of masking tape.  Even using it along the length of the fret like this you can still concentrate the filing on a localised area of the fret that is the highest because of the radius of the fret.

When you feel that you are getting quite close to the correct fret height you can start using your sanding stick more along the sides of the fret than directly on the top and this can help to re-establish the crown to an extent.  After you get to the correct height, using a bit of 400 grit wet & dry paper under your finger or thumb and rubbing it at an angle in against each side of the fret will usually give you an acceptable crown again and you then just polish the fret with much finer paper like P1500.

Thank you.

The single affected fret is close to the dusty end so it doesn't get in the way 90% of the time, but then sometimes I'm in a Stevie Wonder / Entwhistle / Sheehan mood and then it's very annoying!

PCG

I used the Frtlzr at the weekend.  Coincidentally, also for one annoyingly high  fret on a bass (cheap one in my case).  

Worked a treat. Would recommend it for sure. I did lightly re-crown and polish after.  Used the Frtlzl polish tool for the latter, that was also very good especially for the price.