Author Topic: Need for dentist tools or ...how defretting??  (Read 665 times)

jacko

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Need for dentist tools or ...how defretting??
« Reply #15 on: November 25, 2004, 03:58:31 AM »
Paul.
have a look here..
http://www.exotichardwoods.co.uk/Index800.htm
Look under veneers then select Knife Cut. they do several hardwoods in 0.6mm sheets. A square foot would probably do you. Unfortunately they're in england but i expect they'd ship to belgium for the right incentive.  When I made mine, I used car body filler. Not as exotic as maple but it's held up pretty well for about 20 years.
 
graeme  

kungfusheriff

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Need for dentist tools or ...how defretting??
« Reply #16 on: November 27, 2004, 11:42:15 PM »
They make the process of defretting seem pretty easy and straight forward.
Never, never, never will it be that easy. PTBO, it's like this:
To lift the frets, you need a tool that's hard and pointed. I used the awl on my Swiss Army Knife. Very, very carefully, pull the fret out at an upward angle, like opening a door. If you try to pull the frets out through the fingerboard like a train through a tunnel, it gets ugly. The fret tange will make a larger tunnel.
After filling the fret slots with Plastic Wood, a product we have here in the US that should have an analogue in Europe (Bondo should be OK), the fretboard must be dressed so it's hard enough to resist string vibration.
If you're planning on using flats, urethane should do the job. The more liquid you can coax the wood to accept, the harder and better it will be.
Roundwounds should be met with several coats of epoxy, the harder the better. Inquire at your local crafts store.
The method of fixing frets into their slots with epoxy was first used by Roger Sadowsky, as far as I can tell, and hasn't caught on to the point where $100 broomsticks with an F on the headstock would use it, as it adds time and cost to the process of fretting.
There's no easy and cheap way out...I defretted a bass similar to yours without doing it right, and you don't want to know what it sounded like. It can be done, but softly, as the Bard might say.

David Houck

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Need for dentist tools or ...how defretting??
« Reply #17 on: November 28, 2004, 06:24:57 AM »
I'm assuming that the basses with an F on the headstock to which you made reference are not the actual basses with an F on the headstock.  
 
http://www.fbass.com/images/spaltbn5headstock.jpg

kungfusheriff

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Need for dentist tools or ...how defretting??
« Reply #18 on: November 30, 2004, 11:40:44 PM »
Nooooo...I mean those other ones, which the world community of bassists won't string PTBO up for even suggesting homemade mods. The ones with F followed by a vowel, a consonant, another consonant, you get the idea.

palembic

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Need for dentist tools or ...how defretting??
« Reply #19 on: December 01, 2004, 12:30:40 AM »
Well ...for me it will be a kind of quest ...something to do and to tangle. To make something better with my own bare hands. Maybe to understand better the value of instruments, and to understand where vital elements of sound are created in the instrument.
 
Anyway Shawn ...I really appreciated your advice. I will take all precautions needed and keep you all posted in a real Factory to customer thread. Fun: than I can send quests for status to myself and answer myself that thebas is in the routing department ...HA
 
Paul the bad one