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Newport Pro Refret Cost?


Menehune

Question

Sometimes nothin's easy. I bought a very nice 2000 Newport Pro on Reverb for a good price. The described "slight fret ware" turned out to be significant - frets 2 through 12 are significantly flattened, and frets 5 through 9 are shockingly dished under the G string (someone must be selling wound Gs coated in diamond dust). It's beyond leveling and recrowning, unless I want really flat frets, and especially if I want to preserve the fret pips in the neck binding. So my question is: about how much will a refret by a good luthier cost?

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2 hours ago, Jeff R said:

The time to precisely cut the frets to space perfectly between the nibs is labor intensive enough, then there's the scenario if some of the binding nibs are so worn that they have to be built back up with a binding "paste" to better match the height of the new frets. Nibs wear just as frets do. Nib rebuilds are so there's no step-off transition maintaining fret height (visually obvious) or no hard roll on the fret end(s) to match the worn nib(s) that increases the chance of "E" strings rolling off the fretboard edges while playing, which defeats why the "player" in you invested in new iron in the first place. Nib rebuilds, if needed, will obviously add more bench time to the gig.

Making, seamlessly placing and shaping the hardened paste isn't that bad, but perfectly matching the patch paste color to the existing binding color is more challenging than one would think. When I patched some of my very worn '74 Hummingbird's binding with homebrew paste, I had about a half dozen different batch mixes trying to nail the exact creamy color of the aged binding to which it would mate. And the best match, while damn close and good enough for the guitar in question and 99 percent of the guitar-playing population, still wouldn't pass an OCD eye's test - there are apparently substantially more than six or so hues of "creamy aged off-white." :)  This is one of a few reasons I don't save nibs when I do refrets.

I'd definitely send this job to Murkat Jay if I were you, he's an experienced and great player in addition to an experienced and great repair guy and you NEED, NEED both characteristics in the guy you seek for this type of job. There are many things in this job that can go not necessarily wrong but definitely "not right" from both a repair and a player's standpoint.

Since I've been offering constructive information and I've point-blank recommended Murkat as THE guy for your Newport's refret, here's a shameless self-promotion on a refret I did this weekend. This MIM strat's owner wanted the jumbo'est of jumbos (this is Jescar NS18 58118 wire) and a fret edge break angle that would eliminate "E" rolloffs while retaining comfort on his main gigging guitar. Its owner is also one of five guitar repair guys in my immediate market and the second of those five in recent times to send me refrets for their personal guitars. I'm kinda proud of that.

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Woah. Really nice work there, Jeff. You've clearly earned your good reputation.

Thanks for explaining the challenges of surgically inserting frets bound by ivoroid, and trying to match the binding when the nibs need rebuilding. And thanks for recommending Murkat as The Guy to do this work.

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