G&L ASAT Refret

Friday, July 26th, 2019

This G&L ASAT came to us with a really bad twist in the neck. Typically, this type of issue is difficult to see in a picture but, it was really prominent in this guitar so we thought we would share it.

Here, we are looking down the bass side of the neck and you can see that it is relatively straight from the head stock to the body.

However, when you look at the treble side, you can see that it dips quite a bit towards the middle of the neck.

In addition to the twist, this guitar also had some really extreme fret and fretboard wear. We will be doing a refret to fix all of these issues. It should also be noted that when this guitar came in to us, it had a 7.25" radius which, can create some obstacles for lead playing. Since we are refretting the guitar anyway, we will also be changing the radius to 10".

We first pull out the old frets and begin sanding the fret board. This allows us to essentially sand out the twist by getting the playing surface to a more uniform shape. You can see here that while most of the finish has been sanded away, the wear on the board from years of playing goes quite a bit deeper.

An interesting thing about G&L guitars is that the neck is made from two pieces glued together side by side. You can clearly see the glue line going down the middle of the neck here. It's tough to say if this contributed to the more extreme twist as one-piece necks can have the same issue.

Here is another great angle of this guitar where you can see that the twist is so bad, the head stock sits at a different angle that the body from the bass to treble side. The fret board is the main issue with playability though so, we won't worry about this.

Here, we have the completed fret repair with the newly finished board. We have fixed the damage to the playing surface and made it much easier to play now that the twist has been sanded out.

With the playing surface repaired and the additional change to a 10" radius, we have a feeling the owner of this guitar will find this old G&L a dream to play for many more years to come!

G&L ASAT Refret

More posts in fret repair