Gibson Hummingbird Refret

Friday, June 3rd, 2016

This Gibson Hummingbird was brought to us needing a complete refret.

The owner was hoping we cold cleanup some of the grime around the fretboard binding as well, which you can see here along with the damaged frets.

After removing the old frets, we sanded the surface to ensure a consistent radius and cleaned the fret slots of any debris. The sanding process has cleaned most of the grime off of the fretboard, the fret dressing process will clean up what little is left near the binding nubs.

With Gibson's style of fretboard binding, it is necessary to measure the distance between the binding nubs at each fret so the new frets will sit inside them precisely, without pushing them out or leaving any gaps.

Here we have all of the frets properly cut and pressed into place

After sanding all of the frets to a matching radius and crowning them, each one gets individual attention to ensure maximum playability and consistency.

After all the frets have been finished, they are glued in place. We save the gluing until this point in case there are problems with any of the frets during the finishing process.

Once all of the fretwork is finished, we oil the board to keep it healthy and looking great.

Here is a close up of the finished frets and cleaned binding. We'll do a full setup on this guitar and test all the frets and then it will go back to the owner.

Gibson Hummingbird Refret

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