Premier Rock Forum

i want to try this. i'm ordering a cheapy guitar for the purpose.

i looked some stuff up about it.

people seem to recommend getting fret-pulling pliers from stewart-macdonald, to pull the frets off after heating them.

once you've pulled the frets out, there seems to be some debate.
some say you should fill the frets with slow-drying epoxy. some say you can just rub a crayon into the frets to fill them with wax (!) and polish over that. one person says you he just left the holes and it worked fine. i've heard of using wood filler, but someone specifically warned against it, without explaining why.

also, some people sand the whole fret board down a lot to get it even. this makes sense to me since i imagine a lot of cheap guitars have uneven fretboards that they can get away with when it's fretted, but cause problems when you take them off. but being completely unhandy, inexperienced etc. i don't feel comfortable trying to sand a fretboard flat.

any suggestions?

You could rip the fretboard off and replace it with whatever you want.

A friend of mine did this once. But I'm not sure what he used to fill in the gaps after removing the frets, but it was something harder than wax that's for sure. I believe he just sanded down the filler to the level of the fret board, and then very lightly sanded down the whole thing with fine sandpaper. Then re-lacquered the whole thing. I think.

I found it almost impossible to play chords on, but that had nothing to do with the finishing job. I just couldn't get all those strings in tune without frets helping out.

Playing single notes wasn't too bad, but there was very little sustain. The combination of fingers and wood dampened the strings too much.

glue strips of wood veneer into the freshly-created fret slots with PVA glue. chisel off the excess along the top then sand to a smooth finish. this method also has the advantage of giving you visible fret-like markings along the neck.

Shawn Lane played a fretless. Man that kid was a fucking alien on guitar, what a loss to the world. Sorry, tangent. But check him out.