{"id":1026,"date":"2016-05-07T08:01:44","date_gmt":"2016-05-07T14:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2016-05-08T12:32:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T18:32:24","slug":"klein-refret-and-bridge-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/?p=1026","title":{"rendered":"Klein Refret and Bridge Upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve really been enjoying my fake Klein for the past year; it’s a solid guitar and incredibly comfortable to play. That said, I have this personality flaw where once I notice that something is less than ideal, it grates on me ….badly, until I fix it. Thus was the case with the bridge and factory frets.
\n\"20160501_194658\"<\/p>\n

First, Let’s replace the bridge<\/h6>\n

<\/p>\n

\"20160501_201519\"
Seriously. Who came up w\/ “Overlord of Music?”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160501_201431\"
Worst spring ever<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Branded with one of the stupidest slogan of all time: “Overlord of Music”, this unit has two major flaws. OK, three if you count “Overlord of Music” as a problem. The tremolo is worthless. This design is\u00a0a copy of the Steinberger R-Trem and the spring lost the needed strength after a couple weeks. Fortunately, there is a leaver to “lock” the tremolo and I’ve had it engaged since I noticed that tremolo capabilities were nonfunctional. The worse issue was how difficult is was to adjust the tuners, in particular the ‘D’ string. Making\u00a0minor adjustments to the pitch\u00a0required\u00a0reaching over with two hands and squeezing as hard as I can and struggling to turn the keys. It’s unacceptable to have tuners that make me quote Danny Glover’s famous line from Lethal Weapon every time I use them.<\/p>\n

The fine folks at Headless USA sell several models by JCustom that are top-notch and work great as original Steinberger replacement bridges. As much as I’d like to have a tremolo on this guitar, it’s just not worth the additional $200. I opted for the\u00a0JCustom FX Bridge<\/a>. This one is perfect except it requires a shim when a body has been routed for an\u00a0RTrem. Thanks to Google I found a guy in Germany who made some high-quality ones<\/a> a few years back, and I picked up the last two.<\/p>\n

\"20160328_103531\"
The FX bridge sitting on the shim<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"20160328_213403\"<\/p>\n

The shim didn’t seat flush with the factory route, but was fairly close. I had to file some of the\u00a0edges down before installing.<\/p>\n

\"20160328_214339\"
A little sharpy touch up for my OCD in the bridge cavity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next I scraped off some of the powder coating to solder the ground wire to. It was incredibly difficult to get the bridge hot enough with the soldering iron for the solder\u00a0to adhere. I used a fair amount of flux, but that\u00a0ended up not working so well.\u00a0I reached out to a couple of guys in the Stienberger community on this and since most those guys use active electronics,\u00a0none of them\u00a0had ever done this before. Luckily the guy who made the shim gave me the idea of simply placing\u00a0the wire between the shim and the bridge and letting the mounting screws hold it in place. I was very skeptical of this, but so far it’s working perfectly.<\/p>\n

\"20160328_220428\"
A shot of the shim<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160328_220336\"
bridge installed!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was one other challenge with the bridge. The saddles had to be pulled back pretty far on the low strings to get it to get the intonation right. I didn’t realize this was\u00a0a problem until I tried to change the strings and basically couldn’t without pulling the saddles forward again. Reintonating\u00a0a guitar with each string change is only cool\u00a0if your name is Eric Johnson. Luckily I didn’t have to do major surgery to fix this. I simply flipped the saddles backwards for the low strings and now\u00a0I can change strings problem free. So far there isn’t any\u00a0right hand discomfort or negative side effects from doing this.<\/p>\n

\"20160506_175813\"
A close up of the flipped E, A, & D string saddles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Time to fix problem #2: Frets<\/h6>\n

The factory frets were terrible. The\u00a0initial level, crown, and buffing I did helped quiet a bit, but they were still so bad! Some of the fret ends were not flush with the fretboard (I’ll explain why later), and I had three or four dead spots on the neck. It just wasn’t a very good playing experience.<\/p>\n

Until now, the only fret work I’ve done is basic leveling & crowning. Fret\u00a0tools are expensive, the work is tedious, and mistakes are costly. The thought of re-fretting the guitar made me nervous; however, after pricing it\u00a0with several local guitar techs along with an abundance of helpful YouTube videos on the subject, I decided to give it a try. In a perfect world all guitars would have stainless steel frets, but given everything I’ve read about the challenges installing them I didn’t want to attempt it with my first fret job.<\/p>\n

\"20160408_144158\"
$130 later. …ain’t the internet grand?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160408_145613\"
1 out, 23 more to go<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was ridiculously easy to pull the frets out; some of them almost fell out (not good). I did have a few tiny slivers of wood come out with the frets, but it wasn’t too bad. I\u00a0found it\u00a0interesting that the fret tangs had been trimmed at the end of the fret like you would on\u00a0a bound fretboard. This was one of the main reasons the fret ends were not staying in place and I could easily move them w\/ my fingers. Again, that’s not a good thing.<\/p>\n

\"20160408_153002\"
prepped and ready<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I used a 14″ radius block to level the fingerboard, and a .020 fret saw<\/a> to clean the fret slots. The slots were cut really deep and the both ends were filled with some kind of epoxy. The saw worked perfectly to clean them out.\u00a0Unfortunately when I was getting used to using the saw I left several\u00a0scratches on the side of the neck. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but since I stained the neck to look like rosewood, each scratch is a maple line that really pops out.<\/p>\n

I opted for the Stewart McDonald “medium taller” fret wire, and I learned a lot when installing it. All of the tips online are basically correct. The pictures show what went wrong. Essentially I didn’t over-radius the fret wire, nor did I hammer in the fret ends first. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS WHEN INSTALLING FRETS WITH A HAMMER. Seriously, the picture below shows what happens at the fret ends when you don’t.<\/p>\n

\"20160408_193820\"
None of the\u00a0fret ends were properly seated.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160408_193831\"
Another look at the fret ends. 11-13 came out particularly bad!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Frustrated, I pulled\u00a0out the frets and prepped the board for another attempt. I watched more YouTube videos on the subject, and my guitar\u00a0tech, who wasn’t interested in doing the refret, was kind enough to give me some pointers. The frets I was using fit the slots, but just barely. He recommended trying Jescar frets because they are a\u00a0harder alloy and come in a lot of different sizes.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0took my\u00a0time making sure I got\u00a0the best size available for the job. \u00a0Amazon sells the Jescar jumbo ones for ~$13. These have a longer tang which help with the deep slots and I wanted the wider fret wire\u00a0to help cover up some of the scaring on the board from pulling the frets. They come pre-radiused which is nice and there was plenty of wire\u00a0for the job. These frets are extremely hard. My fret nippers cut through the stemac frets like cheese, but these were much harder to cut.\u00a0Clearly not as hard as stainless ones, but I imagine it’s\u00a0close.<\/p>\n

\"20160422_135415\"
Take two. Another $30.00 in supplies later.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gluing frets is controversial. It’s not necessary if the board is perfectly slotted for a fret size and everything is\u00a0perfect. The conditions I was working with were about as far away from that scenario as possible. The picture below shows the glue lines before scraping it away with a razor blade.<\/p>\n

\"20160422_160438\"
So far so good!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160423_230630\"
All seated and glued in. Ready for leveling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160424_212647\"
Post leveling. Time for the crowning file and lots of\u00a0sand paper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160429_215738\"
After carefully taking each fret from 320, 400, 600, 800, 100, 1200, 1500, and 2000 grit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160429_220403\"
After polishing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160429_220411\"
A close up of the new shiny.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160429_222641\"
In the right light the glue marks are still\u00a0visible<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"20160429_222656\"
Looks great after some lemon oil on the wood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After I got the board done I reassembled the guitar. It was like a new instrument.\u00a0What a difference! This was worth the time and effort. Unfortunately, I missed that the 17th fret was low. None of the notes on that fret were usable. <sigh> There were two options 1) replace that fret and spot level or 2) lower\u00a0frets 18-24. I went with the second option because I didn’t feel comfortable spot leveling and I didn’t want to scar the board anymore by pulling the fret. It took me about 3 or 4 hours of leveling, crowning, and sanding\/polishing to get it right. It takes a lot of strokes with the file to crown a fret this wide after it’s lowered this much (mainly frets 20 – 24). It turned out great and I’m glad I went with this option. Lesson learned. Spend as much time w\/ the fret rocker to identify high\/low frets. The slightest bit of rocking can be very problematic.<\/p>\n

\"20160501_150326\"
Fixing number 17. The 12th fret is covered with four pieces of tape to create a subtle fall-away effect with the level on the higher frets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also, I needed to fill the ends of the fret slots. I used rosewood shavings from sanding the fret board. I first tried super glue, but it was too thin and didn’t work well. I used my kids’ Elmer’s glue and that worked out like a champ. Simply place a dot a the edge of the slot. Then press it into the slot w\/ a finger and wipe away all the excess. Next,\u00a0just dab some rosewood dust on the end and it’s done.<\/p>\n

\"20160501_194747\"
Yikes. Super glue overruns can be nasty.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve been playing the guitar for about a week and the tone is just incredible. I couldn’t be happier with the results. Aesthetically, there are some scratches and one bad glue overrun on the back of the neck. While\u00a0I’m not super excited about that, I’m really glad I got this done and it turned out the way it did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve really been enjoying my fake Klein for the past year; it’s a solid guitar and incredibly comfortable to play. That said, I have this personality flaw where once I notice that something is less than ideal, it grates on me ….badly, until I fix it. Thus was the case with the bridge and factory … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Klein Refret and Bridge Upgrade”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gear-music","tag-klein"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrguitar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}