What is a Fretdress?

A Fretdress is the process of accurately levelling then re-profiling and polishing the frets.

There are two main reasons that this needs to be done.

The first is that over time the guitar strings, which are actually harder than the frets, will gradually wear grooves into the frets at the most commonly used points on the neck. As this wear progresses it can cause localised buzzing as the groove in the fret you are playing the note on has become lower than the next fret up the neck so the string hits that one instead of being above it. (see the pictures below which show the same neck before and after a fretdress)

Secondly even on expensive guitars the frets are very often slightly high and low in places from the factory as they are usually just pressed in by a machine during construction and receive no further attention there unless something is seriously amiss.

These slight faults may not show up with a standard factory setup but when you start to lower the action to make the guitar nicer to play you often start to get fretbuzz and choking out of some notes restricting you to having a higher, harder to play, action to hide the problems with the frets.

A  “Fretdress and Setup” will get rid of these annoying issues completely and allow a low, easy action without fretbuzz or notes choking out.

1^st the fingerboard is masked off to prevent damage, then the frets are filed down with special tools until they are all exactly the same height. Next they are re-profiled to their original rounded shape and polished up to a mirror shine.

When the frets are beautifully finished I will carry out a full setup so you get the full benefit of your perfect playing surface!

A guitar will often be able to have the frets dressed several times before they are too low and a refret is required, but sometimes if wear is not dealt with and becomes really deep in just a few areas a partial refret where only the worn frets are replaced with matching new fretwire and blended into the existing unworn frets becomes the best option.

Fretworn Before
Fretworn After

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