I’ve got to be honest, with string grooves that deep in the frets, I would have done a full fret level and recrown. The damage is too deep. But you certainly made it much better from the work that you did.

I like that you got everything squeaky clean and put a fine polish on the frets without resorting to all the specialized guitar cleaning and conditioning products.

Excellent job. Years ago I had a purple fishbelly Japanese Strat which a friend of a friend said he'd dress the frets for me. He forgot the jeans technique for reducing the stickiness of the tape and he pulled half the varnish of a beautiful maple neck.

excellent technique I have used Flitz polish that i use for gunsmith purposes and is amazing .

Great stuff. Very detailed and clearly explained. I would Add 1 thing: cut a plastic bag, and tape-it Over your Pickups and "any open guitar cavity" to Ensure No Steel-wool shavings: touch your electrical components or enter your guitar. I am a bit of a Fanatic when I do guitar work. oNe LovE from NYC

Apart from the steel wool, I think the viewer should consider the title of the video as accurate. He did polish the frets. The title did not say " How to level, file, crown and polish frets"

Amazing work man! Thanks for this it helped me out

Love a nice clean fret board !Great Channel 👍

Very informative. Thanks man

Great detail in how to mask the entire neck!

Excellent! Thanks!

Excellent video, FixTheThings! It would be really great to see more videos like this! Perhaps some refretting, dressing, etc. videos. An easy way to clean up the sides of the frets would be to use a polishing compound like Autosol. Or Brasso, like you also mentioned. I've used that for years, and it works great! It even brings out a great mirror-like shine as well :-) Have a great one Cheers!

Hmmm, now I don't know, but if you sanded in the other direction i.e. along the length of each fret from the beginning, wouldn't you need less steps?

Hi! I just wanted to ask, is it okay to have a slighty flat frets?

Thanks :) Great video!

Superb!

What's exactly the difference between polish and czech frets?

Why bot recrown the top few frets to get rid of the corrosion marks?

What's wrong with using a fret eraser, provided a re-fret isn't😊 really necessary? Works for me!

The amount of fret wear on this guitar where the strings have dug “micro-trenches” into the frets appears pretty deep. A complete re-fret would solve a lot of problems. Trying to smooth & polish the frets would be like putting band-aids on a cancer sore.

para dar brilho em trastes eu uso lixas 800, 1200, 1500, 2000. Recomendo polir um por um ao inves de usar o bloco. não está errado, porem, polir traste por traste o acabamento fica melhor.

Great video thanks a lot 👍

Great video, thanks man. I would add to 8:40, taht it is better to do this at start before covering fretboard itself. If will guard your neck wood and will work better for removing it all in one time. Also, for frets like this, crowning or fret change would be needed actually. Still good starting guide for polishing itself.

Much better safer ways to do this than steel wool. Search ‘fret polishing + Stewmac’ or ‘fret polishing + Music Nomad’ And I wouldn’t use regular beige masking tape .. get the low tack or extra low tack tape from Stewmac, I’ve had regular masking tape leave sticky residue, and you can get by with just 2 pieces of tape .. you just keep moving the 2 pieces up the neck as you polish each fret .. saves time and money in the long run.

You can also find BRONZE WOOL that is non magnetic in case you miss steel wool particles that find their way to the pickups.

Fret erasers work just fine for me!

The way I see it is this guy is still learning what he is doing. Is was a bit premature for him to launch out and make a instructional video about this topic at his level of experience and knowledge on the subject.

Question, how often do you recommend cleaning your guitar this way? Recently I've been doing it every 2 months, I use the steel wool lightly but I still worry that my frets will wear out fast

I wonder if coca cola would have the same effect very usefull video, thanks

I have leveled about a dozen of my necks and just feel the whole "polishing" of frets is somewhat overblown. Level with a beam using 320, re-crown with a tri-corner file. So now a small spot in the center needs fine sanding with 800 grit about 10 strokes inline with the fret...done. Feels good / plays good...next.

I'm no luthier. Even i can see that guitar is crying for new frets!

Nice technique brah

Are these frets from poland?

can mineral oil be used on maple fretboard?

I might hang mine upside down when I do the steel wool. let gravity help keep the fine shavings downward away from the pick ups - but then mag elec is likely more powerful force on the shavings ....

What kind of steel wool do you have over there? In Sweden we have "Svinto", it is very easy to use and nice on your hands :) But maybe it's not the same.

I use a magnet to hold the steel wool. It picks up most of the steel dust.

I was told to only sand lengthwise in line with the fret not sideways.

Don't use alcohol on nitro finishes, it will turn into a soupy, hazy mess, use naptha. Check Stew-Mac's site on how to do this properly.

I just bought a bunch of Harley Benton guitars from Thomann, some have that "sandpapery" feel on the frets (unpolished I guess); should I use steel wool on them or just "wear them in"? Harley Benton are great guitars, btw, even though they may need some work done :)

I wouldve filed the frets too,kinda half ass lol,just bought the new fret Guru dagger 2.0, play like a pro now!

I replace the frets when they're like this.

For me, I remove the neck from the bass to prevent finish damage to the body or pickups.

Great! If only those frets didn't have divots tho. Five stars

Rough job. Wrong tools. Steel wool?

Little extra tipp ... Try avoiding steel wool on electric guitars (with acoustics its fine) ... coz the particles will get attracted by the Pickups and that can destroy them ... I would go for something like the rough side of a kitchen sponge and maybe some polishing comound, Or even the (often blue) rough side of a eraser. Same effect but saver for your pickups

Alcohol wipes on the finish? Not recommended!

This was a minimal fix. Yes, the first 3 frets really need to be replaced. This is a task left for a trained tech as the fingerboard could be damaged (slots).

How do you get a guitar to rust like that? xP Impressive :p

This is really helpful. But I've heard it's very dangerous to use steel wool on a guitar.

Fretboards are only certain sizes, like jumbo or medium; even a classical guitar, which can have really wide fretboard like 53mm, the fret spacing is uniform - it's amazing that guitar luthiers don't have a set of one-piece covers to throw on the whole neck, to save all the masking tape work?

Steel wool, bad idea. Brasso is nice to get a nice shine.

Very well explained and nice job.First time watching. I was wondering what year is that Tele and is it yours? All the best. Phil Jersey Shore Area

Those 'were' the nastiest frets I have ever seen... daaamn

Thanks, learned a lot. Subscribed. Thanks for the restringing video too.

Shows you not to believe everything on KZfaq lol...

Not a clue

Fret dressing first, Bud!!

A lady in a lake handed me a guitar once.

How to avoid the problems of steel wool? Don´t use it.

Save yourselves TIME & Money . I bought a $8 dollar Finger Nail shaping and Polishing Kit for Women . It came with a charged & rechargeable hand held wireless Dremel . I chose the right attachment which the instructions it told me what to use , I used fret guards and some Polish and was done 24 frets SILKY SMOOTH and polished frets !!! My frets never get as bad as these in the Video but if you wanna save time and money Amazon is your best friend for Fret Polishing . ENJOY !!

nothing seems to beat Dremel and rubbing compound.

He better had ordered a refret lol

Mask off the fingerboards correctly then just use Duraglit. Shiny and clean frets but minimal metal removed.

great video.... Bestine seems impossible to find.... Would MEK substitute ok????

just dont get steel wool particles in your pick ups i would avoid steel wool

600,000?!?

Becareful, german might get into that fretboard

Try some brasso a small swatch of cloth to apply the metal polish. A heavy card template to protect the fingerboard with a cut slit for the fret to sit. Easily home made with scissors, experiment. and a soft lint free cloth to remove the brasso residue and to polish to a shine. And last but not leased a little bit of elbow-grease and a good wanking motion. Oh ! and maybe some light elastic gloves to protect your dainty little fingers from the nasty ol' metal polish (Brasso). Do alternate frets top to bottom this will allow polish to dry and not smear the fingerboard ( ie, fret 1 then fret 3) thus allowing polish to cut the fret. yeah..... shouldn't take but a few minutes to apply when polish is dry.. think of the frets as tiny little penises, give them a good wank to get them to shine. P.S. WIRE WOOL are you mad!!!!!!"? bye bye pickups. steel wool the best way to fuck up your pickups. Try'd and tested by the world renowned. Young idiots club.🙄😏😣🥱

Don't waste your masking tape it can be done with just using fret protector

You sound like nukenorway

I use toothpaste, works great

Maybe not.

I'm still waiting for the Benny Hill theme :/

Hey bud, why did you not just rub the steel wool along the length of the fret instead across the fret? Rubbing the steel wool along the length would have removed tarnishing on sides of frets. It also leaves any fine scratches travelling in the direction of string bends. I finish my frets with a polishing wheel on a dremel tool which honestly smashes the amateur finish you are left with after your attempt. I find it really hard to believe that your are a guitar tech. Who have you toured with?

Your guitar needs refretting, J.S

Never use wire wool on a guitar, stray pieces will get in your pick ups and destroy them.

Never use steel wool

Don't take this guys advice unless you want to ruin your guitar...

Uhmmm Nope!

Those frets will never play right with flat tops. Those need recrowned and then polished. I'm 100% sure they are also in need of leveling. Yeah, they need a complete level job, crown and polish. Sorry man, I had to say it. Thanks for the tips though.

heretic that removes all the mojo

Easier way is to unbolt neck, buy one for $50.00!

This is how you do not polish your frets

Why not remove the neck … 4 screws and 2 minute job

Sand paper and alcohol?!?!?! People, do not listen to this guy, he has no clue what he's doing!!

You don't have a clue what you're doing. If you're gonna take steel wool to the frets, do it right. Run it the length of the frets, not the length of the board. The whole idea of steel wool is that it will take to the shape of the fret, and you won't be left with corrosion at all. But no, you THEN take a file to get the rest...then sandpaper. This is a video of someone guessing and trying, not a tutorial.

I don’t mean to be a prick. But honestly you should remove this video. Just about everything your trying to teach is wrong. Not to mention polishing frets once you saw all the deep string wear into the frets. You need to measure if you can get by with a leveling, then crown then fret ends, then POLISH your frets. I’m sure maybe since you posted thugs you’ve learned more. Once again I’m not trying to be mean.

OMG this is the worst advice...EVER !

Never use steel wool on your guitar. Never Never Never. Just about everything in this video is wrong.

Steel wool - perfect way do ruin pickups. Magnet - another perfect way to ruin pickups. Do someting good to youtube community and remove this misleading video.