Originally Posted by
deacon Mark
I have done research on this in the past and no one I know uses one. It sounds good but really seems overkill for the money. Having done hundreds of fret dressing and refretted many guitars my goal is to have the neck as straight as possible to start the leveling. This happens usually with a small tweak of the truss rod with strings off after I determine the relief already in the neck. I like a little relief normally but not much at all. Then I simply dress the frets. To me this gets everything in a level plain and then when tension is put on the guitar with strings it all involves finding the relief again as you need. This should allow the best fret dressing.
That said there are guitar and bass necks that are problems. Sometimes they flex and move a lot I find this with cheap made basses especially. Then of course there is the issue of guitars that have no truss rod. For these and I do a fair number of them it really involves putting some tension on the neck with a band I use. That a got me through although I can still do the refret or dress without the band. In fact in some guitars there is a slight fall off of the frets in the fingerboard extension. Not much and done with experience over the years. Some guitars need this a bit and others do not.
I just ask here as might get a different perspective. I have not had complaints about my fret work so nothing I need to do. One of my issue with the neck jig is that it does take time to set up and I just have not seen the trade off. I respect Dan Erlewine but Bill Hollenbeck and Barker never used one and they got great fret work and necks. I am pretty sure most builders don't either but I don't know. Most are put off by price and I agree but????
Charlie Garnett - Franken Tele
Yesterday, 08:52 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos