Filing down frets?

BizzyC

About a month ago, my gf asked me to post this question for her, which I forgot to do. Hence, this post is bound to be filled with incorrect info, as I cant remember a lot about what she said.

She has an Aria Pro II, but she says there's a problem with the sound.
Something to do with the frets being to large, causing a buzz or something...
you can tell I know my guitars, eh?

Anywhooo, what she wants to know is how would you go about cutting the frets down to size withough messing up the fretboard, can you pay someone else to do this?
If it's difficult, I'd rather pay someone, cause if a power tool is involved, it'll be me doing the work, and me taking the blame when said guitar inevitably catches fire.....

Ancient1

I very much doubt that the frets need filing. I consider this to be a last resort for really crude guitars, and i don't think the Aria Pro falls into that "really crude" category.

I think maybe she didn't set it up and intonate it properly. Fret buzz is not always caused by "large" frets.

Doctor J

It is difficult to do properly. Basically you file the tops of the frets down so they're all level, then you shape the flattened tops of the frets back into a round shape (so you can intonate properly) and then you polish them until they're smooth and the string glides across the surface easily and you do all this while removing as little of the frets as possible so they maintain their height. It's not the sort of thing you try for the first time on a guitar you want to keep

Getting it done is expensive (I'd guess at least €100 these days) though you should give Derrick Nelson a call (his number is in the instrument resources sticky) for a quote and maybe a couple of the shops in town too?

If you're brave though, I picked up one of these and tried it out. not too bad, though just make sure you cover the fretboard before you start.

Though first of all, go through the setup links in the resources sticky to see if a bad setup is the problem.

BizzyC

Well, I think the problem may only be on 1 or 2 of the frets, where they get fairly close to the strings.

Thanks J, I'll get her to have a look at all that, I'm only a month late....

LundiMardi

i reckon you should bring it to someone knows what they're doing man, no point in filing if you're not 100% that's the cause, the truss rod may need adjusting or the action may just need to be raised a little bit, anything really.

Eoin Madsen

BizzyC wrote:

Well, I think the problem may only be on 1 or 2 of the frets, where they get fairly close to the strings.

Rattle from a poor setup often only happens on one or two frets. Seriously, consider that before you take a file to it!

BizzyC

LundiMardi wrote:

ithe truss rod may need adjusting or the action may just need to be raised a little bit, anything really.

/noise Swooosh!!!

Did you hear that? It was the sound of something going completely over my head!

Don't worry lads, I'll pass on all of the suggestions made.

Cheers