Don't Fret...

I just took my latest Strat down for a refret at Performance Guitar in Hollywood... at first, I thought maybe I could get away with one more "fret dressing" (you can generally do this up to 3 times on a set of frets)... but the wear was too much. My normal fear when this is done is that most luthiers have to refinish the fretboard to some extent when the frets are replaced. Sometimes, with older instruments, little pieces of wood are lost when the frets are removed and then must be re-glued back into the fretboard again (which also means re-sanding the area lightly with some sort of refinishing also). When this occurs, a lot of the 'mojo' we all love with an old guitar's fretboard can be lost (the darkened areas on a maple fretboard, where fingers have been playing for years). A friend of mine took his mid-seventies Tele for a refret to HIS luthier (not mine), and it came back with a neck that looked brand new... ugh! I got my guitar back today. I had asked the guys at Performance to try and leave my fretboard as original as possible... which they did! This is difficult to do, since much more skill is required to safely remove old frets, without any visible damage to the fretboard (that would have required some loss of mojo). I cannot even tell it has been refretted (from the top sides!). How did they do it... well Performance Guitar has been building custom guitars for years, so if anyone could have done this type of job, it was them... wow! (Practice makes perfect...)