Vintage maple board refret needed—can i keep the mojo?

paddydaddyo

paddydaddyo

Supporting Member
Jun 16, 2007
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Greenville, SC, USA
#1
The '75 Ripper that I recently purchased was in pretty rough cosmetic condition. Thankfully, all of the electronics function properly and it cleaned up nicely. I initially thought I could coax a little more life out of the frets, but in the "money" area especially they are flat as a board.

So I am going to have a pro do a refret, but I would love to be able to keep the original nut and the beautifully yellowed lacquer on the neck.

Is it possible to do a proper refret without a refinish? I've honestly never had a gloss maple board refretted in my 40+ years of playing ... only one rosewood and one phenolic.

Thoughts, tips, suggestions welcome and thanks in advance.


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#2
There is no need whatsoever to touch the finish on a refret. I have a G-3 from ‘75 and refretted it myself. No problems. The frets aren’t embedded in the finish, they are on top of the finish.

only the frets will change on a re-fret as long as the nut slots are high enough. As long as you don’t use a larger fret wire than you have on there now. So the nut should be fine, if slots are low, it’s simple to shim it and use it. On mine I went ahead and had a new bone nut made to replace the stock plastic nut.
 
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#5
Hard to tell from a picture but if you have enough height, you may be able to just get the frets crowned. Gibson wasn't great at properly crowing frets at the time your bass was made.

If the board is flat and in good shape there is no reason the touch it. You may need a new nut or to shim the nut if you re-fret.
 
#10
Another case to say you should have no problem.

I did the refret myself on my 78 Stratocaster with a maple board. First maple board I had ever done and it came out fine.

I did cut a new bone nut for it.

Fender had sprayed the finish after the frets were in place so I had to separate the finish between the old frets and the board. I don’t know if Gibson does that, but either way it’s just an extra step. No big deal.
 
#11
Lucky the laquer is under the frets. If you want to refret a Rickenbacker, where they sprayed right over the frets, the neck finish usually toast. I'm guessing a pro will heat the frets up with a soldering iron, which will soften the finish some, shouldn't chip out much it at all, and as others said, easily touched up with some drop fill if necessary. You might get lucky on the nut, if not, easy enough to Relic a new one.
 
#14
i'd expect a '70s maple gibson neck to not be especially straight, which could make leveling new frets an issue unless they start out really tall

otherwise the right play might in fact be to plane the board true and re-spray it; done properly you should be able to get a reasonably close color match, and being nitro lacquer it should blend pretty naturally into the old lacquer
 
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#15
paddydaddyo said:
What I thought, and was hoping to hear. I need to look into it, but since you are already here: what wire did you use on your G-3 refret? 6120?
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Haha. I was 16 years old and did a horrible job using “jumbo” wire. I just pressed them in and that’s it lol. Played it like that for years. When the frets got chewed up enough, I took it to a guitar builder and he leveled them and filed them and cut a bone nut.
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