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View Full Version : 51 surgery



Ro3b
March 25th, 2007, 03:58 PM
This afternoon I took a deep breath, removed the neck of my '51, filed the fret-ends, stuck a shim in the neck pocket, and put it all back together. I've been putting off the job for months, afraid I might wreck the finish or strip out the bolt holes. But everything went fine.

For the fret work, I used low-tack masking tape to protect the edges of the fretboard, and just worked away at the frets with a 6" bastard file, then went over them again with a piece of 600 grit sandpaper wrapped around the file. The job took about an hour. I'm lucky in that my '51's frets weren't sticking out all that much, but the bevel at the top edge of each fret-end was pretty sharp, so I spent some time rounding those off too.

To shim the neck, I used a very thin piece of Spanish cedar salvaged from a cigar box. My filthy habits always come in handy eventually. I had a sheet of the stuff maybe .5 mm thick; I broke off a strip about a quarter inch wide and dropped it in at the lower end of the pocket.

When I got it all back together, I found my shim was almost too thick. Almost. Which means it was perfect. I had to raise my saddles, of course, which took care of another problem I'd had with this guitar, viz. the little allen screws digging into the heel of my hand. I may still eventually upgrade with one of those supposed GFS bridges when/if they appear again, but (having spent the last couple of cours playing the bejesus out of this guitar) I'm pretty happy with the stock one now.

So. Mission accomplished. What was already a pretty nice guitar is now a total blast to play. The intonation is improved, I can play faster and bend strings with about half the effort, and I think the saddles being a tad higher has fattened up the tone a little.

Just thought I'd share. I'm enormously pleased with my '51 now. If, like me, you've got one of these guitars and you've been procrastinating these tweaks, for heaven's sake just jump in and do it. You'll never regret it.