How many here do their own set-ups?

[deacon Mark]

When you level the frets the fingerboard needs to be completely flat, or as flat as possible. Stew Mac and Dan have a whole gizmo set up that charge a fortune for to do fret dressing. I suspect it works and fine and nothing wrong with it however all the 2 great builders that taught me how to dress frets never had one and never used one. So I don't use this very expensive tool to get the neck straight and then dress the frets. The neck can be actually be set straight with 2 blocks and a clamp on the neck if need be. I never that had to resort to doing it but given some necks are do not have truss rods then I have it ready.

[John A.]

When you level the frets the fingerboard needs to be completely flat, or as flat as possible. Stew Mac and Dan have a whole gizmo set up that charge a fortune for to do fret dressing. I suspect it works and fine and nothing wrong with it however all the 2 great builders that taught me how to dress frets never had one and never used one. So I don't use this very expensive tool to get the neck straight and then dress the frets. The neck can be actually be set straight with 2 blocks and a clamp on the neck if need be. I never that had to resort to doing it but given some necks are do not have truss rods then I have it ready.

I gather there are different schools of thought about this, and I don't doubt that you doing it the traditional way with the neck straight + your skills and your good tools would do a better job than I did with this cheap-o kit. But there are people who recommend leveling with string tension and there are tools oriented toward this (including some nicer looking ones from Stew-Mac), It makes a certain amount of sense to me, so I figured I'd try it. The worst that would happen is I'd have to bring the guitar to a pro who would re-do it if I messed things up . I was very careful not to take a lot of material off the frets and the results were satisfactory. I managed to clean up buzzes and not destroy my guitar for much less than the cost of a pro fret leveling job, so I'll call it a win. Not sure I'll do it again, but it was worth the experience, and not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

John