1993 American Standard Stratocaster: Fret Level and Set Up


1. The patient: an early 1990's American Standard Fender Stratocaster. The neck suffered from "fret board tongue lift", which is a fancy way of saying that the end of the fretboard "ski jumps" up. This occurs because the neck is more stable where it becomes fatter near the neck pocket.	2. Fret Wear causes fret buzz and throws off intonation. Nothing that a fret leveling and set up can't fix on this strat.


3. Neck Removal I prefer to re- move necks for fretwork on fender style guitars. The neck is held on with a series of bolts (typically 4 bolts but on some older models 3). Removing the neck gets the body of the instrument out of my way which negates the need to protect the instrument with a steel shield or tape. The clamp stabalizes the neck as I loosen the bolts.	4. Removing the Nut is important in order to prevent it from sustaining damage during fret leveling. Usually Fender style nuts will come out with a modified set of end nippers. At this stage I always adjust the truss rod to compen- sate for the lack of string tension. Some- times a new bone nut must be fabricated if the original nut has been improperly modified or if it is worn out.


5. Correcting Fret Board Tongue Lift begins by knocking down the offending frets with a modified mill file (we cut the handles off and round the corners to prevent damage to the frets or instrument). I follow up the filing with a short dead flat sanding bar. During this stage I also put a slight secondary plane into the fretboard. The purpose of this planned fatigue is to compensate for the bowing which will occur when the instrument is under string tension.	6. Leveling the Frets is quick and painless with a long dead flat sanding bar and some P-220 grit sandpaper. The depth of the frets' pitting allows me to determine what grit of sandpaper to use for leveling. The courser the paper, the deeper the sanding marks I'll have to polish out later. If the fretwear isn't too deep I'll use P-400 grit to save time later.


7. Recrowning the Frets goes quickly with the shop's diamond fret crowning file. This file has rounded ends which are not only great for working on acoustic fretboard tongues but they also come in really handy for any spot filing necessary to tighten up the peak of the crown.	8. A Properly Crowned Fret has a thin strip of sanding marks down the center of the crown's peak. This ensure's proper intonation and a good quick feel.


9. Rounding the Fret End is important because I want to minimize the resistance that my client's left hand feels. This is both comfortable and improves the speed of playing.	10. Sanding the Frets is nece- sary to remove filing and sanding marks. Because our diamond crowning file cuts so smoothly I started sanding with P-400 grit and moved up to P-600 grit to pre- pare both the board and the frets for polishing.


11. Polishing the Frets begins with a thorough sweeping of the freboard followed by scrubing the fretboard and frets with #0000 steel wool.	12. Final Polishing of the Frets is done with micro mesh abrassive pads. These pads come as a set of seven. They start at 2,400 grit and go up to 12,000 grit. The lusterous finish left on the frets is akin to the finish left on our shop's edged tools after we strop them with leather.


13. Cleaning the Fret Board is necessary to remove all of the metal and sandpaper particles from the porous rosewood. I like to use naptha for this job. In this photo you can see how filthy the paper towel I used was. This was the third pass I made at scrubbing the fretboard.	14. Sealing the Fretboard with Mineral Oil brings out the beauty of this Indian Rosewood Fretboard. It also leaves a faster neck than some other fretboard sealers. We also use lemon oil and butcher's wax (which must be buffed out).


15. Reattaching the Neck is fast and easy with the shop's low powered cordless drill. On this particular drill we've found that setting the torque to #3 achieves a snug fit without over tightening the bolts which would risk stripping out the threading in the neck. The small bar clamp ensures full contact in the neck pocket for improved tone and sustain.	16. Regluing the Nut on a Fender style instrument is done, in our shop, with hot hide glue. Hide glue is a good choice for this job because of its strong initial tack, water cleanup and its ease of dis- assembally should the nut require removal for future maintanance. I cleaned up the squeeze with a q-tip.


17. The Truss Rod is Adjusted after restringing the guitar. The truss rod is always the first adjustment made during a set up.	18. Adjusting the Nut Slots must be done to compensate for the change in the fret height. I achieve this with the shop's nut slotting files.


19. Adjusting the Saddles to accomodate the client's specific pref- erances in action is done with a small allen wrench and a 150mm steel ruler. I measure the action at the 12th fret with the steel ruler. I first establish the heighth of the e strings measuring from the top of the 12th fret to the bottom of the strings. I then adjust the a,d,g and b strings by measuring to the tops of the strings. The purpose of measuring the strings this way is to ensure an even feeling progression as the strings' diameters and height change. The strings' height from the top of the 12th fret measured to the top of the strings could look something like this: e 1.175 mm/ b 1.51 mm/ g 1.845mm/ d 2.18 mm/ a 2.515mm/ e 2.85mm. This would be very low action. But, to each their own!	20. Intonating is the final adj- ustment done during a set up. Intonation must be adjusted to accomodate changes in string tension. An instrument will never play in tune unless it is properly intonated. With new client's I always gather as much information about their playing style and preferances as I can before I set up their instrument. Sometimes a follow up adjust- ment is necessary to ensure optimal play- ability for their personal tastes. For this reason our shop has a 2 week free re- adjustment policy. We record all action adjustments in order to replicate each set up for our client's other instruments.


21. These Set Up Tools achieved a professional set up, allowing this Fender Strat to play and feel better than new.