Opinions on this leveling kit

[Wooly]

Came across this kit. Looks pretty easy. Anyone familiar with it and would you advise to use it? Pros and cons?

http://www.fretrefinishing.com/?gcli...IaAlwMEALw_wcB

[charles Tauber]

Interesting idea. I've not tried it. However, I'm skeptical that one can properly re-crown frets using that device.

[mirwa]

Hahaha, sorry love these things that pop up, probably okay if your a player got 3 hrs spare, your not too fussy with the quality of the work and just want to be able to say you did it yourself, then perfect device.

A flat piece of steel with a small hump in it, is not going to recrown your frets, it will leave a nice flat fret with a slightly rounded corner to it.

The reason we use long bars when levelling necks is so that way the neck is level over its length, if the frets for example were wavy along the length of the fretboard, after doing this process they would still be wavy.

This device may be okay if you had levelled and crowned your frets vee traditional methods, lowered the action to a ridiculously low height, and then you find that a fret is slightly higher than the one next to it. Then again, if this was the situation i would level that one high fret than utilise this ""tool""

Steve

[Wooly]

Originally Posted by mirwa

A flat piece of steel with a small hump in it, is not going to recrown your frets, it will leave a nice flat fret with a slightly rounded corner to it.

The reason we use long bars when levelling necks is so that way the neck is level over its length, if the frets for example were wavy along the length of the fretboard, after doing this process they would still be wavy.

Makes sense to me. I'm not a tech but it did seem a little hoaky to me. I could see that one could do more damage than good especially in the wrong hands (mine). I think I'll leave it alone.

[mirwa]

Originally Posted by Wooly

I think I'll leave it alone.

Good call, lots of people out there sell "designer" tools or things that they call tools.

Most guitar techs that I personally know, have fancy stuff from places like stewmac and lmii etc, most old school luthiers I know have tools that have been adapted from local hardware stores.

Designer tools like this one, I feel are targetting guys who own guitars and like the idea of tweaking their own personal instrument.

Steve

[redir]

Yeah there are some good tips in that video like marking the tops of the frets or the troubled spots and so on and some people like to do this with strings on but no way on the crowning.

There might be very few instances where string on dressing is worth it but for the most part it's not necessary imho.

The best tool I've found is a leveling beam. I use the Stewmac one that is heavy steel and it levels the entire board rather then just spot leveling like in that video. It only works if you can get the neck dead straight though.

For crowning I use a triangle file followed by Gurian crowning file which puts a perfect crown on the top as the file tips are U shaped.