Fret Skim and set-up

When guitars come in for a setup, we often find that a truly GREAT setup requires a bit of gentle fret levelling.
This small adjustment can make all the difference, eliminating occasional high spots or low regions, adding some fallaway, or introducing a compound radius higher up the neck to smooth out bends.

Take, for example, this Squier Stratocaster 40th Anniversary edition that needed a little TLC to bring out its best.
Follow along as we guide you through the process.

 

Note the kitchen timer on the bench - we time our work to make sure we stay on course with each guitar.
Experience has shown us that including a fret skim  with a set-up increases the time spent from an hour to about 90 minutes, but it’s time and money very well spent.

Since this is a bolt-on neck, we remove it and work on it separately from the body. This approach not only makes the job easier but also keeps the guitar's body safe during the process.

We begin by adjusting the truss rod to make the neck perfectly straight, using a notched straight edge that reads the wood rather than the fret tops, which may be uneven. The neck is fully supported along its back and under the heel—again, the advantage of working on the neck off the body.

Next, we mask the fretboard for protection and use our precise flat glass-bottomed levelers to skim the tops of the frets, eliminating any high or low spots. We add a bit of "fallaway" at the higher end of the neck, accommodating the strings' motion path to prevent them from striking the higher frets.

After leveling, we re-crown the fret tops to restore their smooth dome shape, using diamond-toothed crowning files. We then work through different grades of abrasives and polish until the frets are smooth and gleaming.

Shiny!

With the frets now shiny and ready, we restring the guitar and proceed with the actual setup—carefully cutting the nut slots and setting the relief, action, and intonation. We play-test and tweak the guitar until we're confident it's perfect.

This guitar, although new, benefited greatly from this TLC. It’s now playing at its best and has fresh strings to match. The customer was thrilled to get their new guitar back quickly and performing far better than before.

This brief overview captures the process, though it can become more involved depending on what the guitar needs.