Refret / Replace frets

We perform both partial and complete refrets on bound and unbound fingerboards, maple, rosewood or otherwise. An instrument with fret wear limited to the first 5 or 6 frets may be a candidate for a partial refret, if the remaining frets have a good amount of height left and fingerboard planeing is not required. However, if the frets have been leveled before and lack the necessary height for another filing- a complete refret will be necessary. When performing a complete refret we have access to the entire fretboard and can level and radius it before the new frets are installed.

For obvious reasons, installing frets by pressing them in is greatly preferred but at times we will encounter a fingerboard that requires an alternative method of fretting.

On occasion you will find a refretted fingerboard that has had it's frets epoxied in. The fret slots were cut large enough that the fret could drop into the fingerboard slot without a great deal of effort and epoxy was used to hold the fret in place. Unfortunately this method usually leaves the fret slot so large that fretwire with a large enough tang to compress that slot may not exist. In cases where the instrument has already been fretted in this manner then we are left to either refret it using the same method, replace the fingerboard, or go about the costly and time consuming effort of filling and recutting the fret slots.