bymail

Fret-work by mail : 'bolt-on' necks can be sent to me for fret-work. If you are interested in this, please email me, telling me what kind of neck you have, and what you want done to it. If I am capable of doing the job, I will give you a price estimate.
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Soapbarstrat@onlinerock.com

Pulled frets

Please read all of the following, before sending me your guitar or neck :

Payment : I prefer postal money order, so I can ship your neck when I cash it. This can be sent with your neck, or later, before I ship your neck back. I also sometimes take trades for work (guitar parts, etc ???)

Insurance : Just be aware that the postal service will only compensate for the USED value of your item. The best "insurance" is to properly pack your item. So far, necks insured, and uninsured, have all arrived ok.

You need to tell me about any defects the neck has (or seems to possibly have). Even if repair has been done to the neck, I need to know the details about that as much as possible. If you have consulted with other guitar repairmen about your guitar, I would like to know what they said, especially if they told you they couldn't, or didn't want to attempt to, fix your guitar.

A re-fret will often require a new string nut. I like to use the following materials : Phenolic, Corian, Tusq, Nylatron.

Sometimes, if you want to save money, I can shim the string nut already on the guitar, by gluing a thin shim to the bottom of it. Sometimes I can re-use the existing string nut without shimming it.

Please send a new set of strings along with guitar or neck. (even better if you include an extra high E and B string)

Leave the tuning gears on your neck. (at least send them along with the neck. Sometimes it's wise to take them off, for the neck to fit well inside of a narrow shipping box).

Send the screws for the neck too (the ones that screw the neck to the body) I usually don't need the metal plate.

Pulling out the old frets yourself is not doing me a favor, it actually makes my work harder. Please leave them in. This applies to just about any kind of work. You'll often be making more work for me by doing something yourself. Please ask me before doing anything like that.

You shouldn't get your neck re-fretted until you are sure what size fret-wire you want. Before sending me your guitar/neck, make sure I have the size of fret-wire you want, or we can talk about whether or not I can get another size, but that needs to happen before you ship.

Tell me about the style of music you play, and your technique, if possible. I also need to know what tuning you use (standard tuning, tune down 1/2 step, etc)

You can get an idea of what the shipping cost is, here (US Postal Website). My listed prices do not include any shipping fee.

Thanks for reading this whole list. If you think I should add anything else to this list, please tell me.

Rob's guitar repair

In many cases, customers can just send me their "bolt-on" neck for fret-work. It's much cheaper than shipping a whole guitar. I can often mount the customer's neck to a "surrogate" guitar body (see photo at left) so it will have the proper string tension. I have 7 "surrogate" guitar bodies for different neck bolt patterns, and can always plug and re-drill new holes in one of them.

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