Lovely vintage 175 in for a re-fret, I think the owner said it was 1969 but apologies if I’ve got that wrong. There was some debate on this one as to whether it should be re-fretted with silver/nickel frets to keep it historically correct or use stainless steel, which I favour as standard. It was agreed that we should use stainless and here’s my reasoning; re-fretting requires some levelling of the fret board and can cause small amounts of damage, like chips no matter how careful you are. With this is mind surely re-fretting less is better. Stainless steel lasts much longer than silver/nickel so any guitar with stainless steel frets needs re-fretting less. So, less re-frets protects the fingerboard, or to put it another way, would you rather replace a consumable part like frets or a fingerboard? As we reach a time where vintage electric guitars are 100 years old I would say preserving the wood is the most important thing here.
This guitar has been played and is still a player instrument. I changed the nut fro an unbleached bone one, as the original was cut too low for the new frets. Obviously I’ve saved it.
