It’s hard to believe that this neck is worth over 5 figures, but expensive gear like this is the reason we’re a licenced and heavily insured shop. It’s always a treat to work on these old Fenders like this real-deal 1960 neck with original tuners, nut, and frets. The owner sent us this neck to do some light fret levelling on. Replacing them would devalue the guitar by 10-15%. For bolt on necks, we have the right jigs and tools to not need the body to be sent in.
This surrogate body made of curly maple is to attach the neck and to help factor in string tension while leveling frets.
Accessing the truss rod would be impossible without this jig. This is a huge time saver!
The original frets were pitted badly enough to allow for clarity issues of notes in root position. We have to take the frets down whilst being careful not to take too much off.
This tool from my friend Bernie Tusko at FretGuru.com is great for measuring fret wear in the string grooves, in addition to doing a handful of other crucial measurements. A highly recommended addition to your workbench.
Once we’ve ascertained how much metal needs to come off, we use our graded Straight Frets diamond files to level the frets.
Then we crown the frets and polish them out like chrome. The reduction of dirt and grime between the string and fret ensures the slowest fret wear.
And we’re all done! This neck is ready to be sent back to it’s body.
If you’d like to only send in your neck, we have surrogate Fender bodies with four and three hole neck configurations available to Plek them.
