For example, the scratch on this gorgeous Les Paul’s birdseye maple top. Time for an emergency lacquer repair! While reinstalling this pickup mounting ring, a stubborn screw “made” the screwdriver jump onto the top. This made a nasty scratch/dent combo right where it shows. Instead of freaking out, I calmly said. A common area to see binding cracks is at the end of the frets. When fingerboards shrink due to dryness the frets may extend past the edge of the shrunken fingerboard placing pressure on the binding. This results in fine line cracks at the ends of the frets. Repairing Loose Binding. Apr 04, 2015 Only problem is that along the fretboard binding I have small cracks perpendicular to each fret. Almost every fret has a crack to some degree. They do seem to only go as deep as the lacquer and not actually damage the celluloid material. I understand that many say this part of a Les Paul due to the factory fret work and to just live with it. Look at this closeup of a 1950s Les Paul and you can see the binding nibs capping the ends of each fret. Here’s how to do that, using fret files. Gibson started shaping bindings at the fret ends nearly 100 years ago. After fretting the board, they slapped on the binding then scraped the heck out of it between the frets.
Refretting a 1959 Gibson Les Paul “Burst”
This 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, AKA “Burst” was in need of a refret and a good setup. I photographed the process as I went along. It had been refretted before at some point but the remaining frets were low, flat and not seated well. The fretboard also suffered from unlevelness and a rounded off, uneven radius. Also, with the truss rod fully tightened, there was too much relief in the neck. It would never play well without a refret and correction of the fretboard.
The nut had been shimmed up with various plastics and glue. I’ll give it a solid shim later if the nut is too low after the new frets are in. I adjusted the truss rod so there is room to loosen or tighten it once the refret is complete.
Some loose binding was in need of glue.
With heat from a soldering iron, the frets are freed from old glue and pulled out with minimal chipping.
All the frets are removed, now for the fun part.
Fret slots are “fortified” with ultra low viscosity cyanoacrylate glue(super glue), taking care to glue any chips back in place.
Time to sand! Sanding is done with a machine level sanding bar and adhesive back 120 grit sandpaper. Finer grits will be used later. The bar is run lengthwise along the string line, to insure levelness along each string and to correct the radius at the same time. I’m aiming to maintain a 10 inch radius at the the upper register of the board and a 9 inch radius at the nut. 10 inch radius will accommodate the bridge radius and 9 inches at the nut will give comfort as well as take care of the fretboard roll-off in that area. You can see here there was a deep dip in the board just up from the body joint that was causing a lot of playability issues. You can also see some of the roll-off.
Filling a chip with a teflon dam along the way.
Almost there! I use the little wooden boat sander(seen at the right) to dial in small corrections in radius between sanding with the bar.
The owner decided to go with fret wire of similar dimensions to Gibson factory fretwire from the late 50′s. This wire is .103″ in width.
All fret slots are cleared of glue and debris to an adequate depth and width to receive the new frets. A dremel tool with an adjustable depth setting is great for this task.
A small bevel is given to each slot to help frets sit better and prevent future chipping.
Fretboard is leveled and radiused and fret slots are prepped.
New frets are trimmed and tapped in. Once frets are completely flush and properly seated, a small bead of ultra thin viscosity cyanoacrylate glue is wicked into one side. This is done to prevent future fret “pop out” due to changes in humidity and temperature. I use a swab of vaseline prior to glueing to direct the glue into the fret slot.
All the frets are in!
Frets are trimmed to the edge of the binding and beveled with a hand file, then cleaned up with 600 and 1000 grit sandpaper.
Frets are then leveled with the sanding bar and 220 grit adhesive back paper to chase out any minor discrepancies to insure everything is as level as possible.
Checking the level.
Fretboard is lightly scraped with a razor blade.
Sanding, cleaning and polishing.
Frets are done, time for the setup!
Here you can see the original red lacquer under the pickguard.
A new shim was needed to achieve the right nut slot height while preserving the original nut.
Setup complete, ready to play!
As low impedance models, the Les Paul Personal and Les Paul Professional guitars required a special low impedance guitar amplifier for normal operation - or, if using a normal guitar amp, an additional low impedance transformer was required, to prevent a loss of level.
This page also describes the function of the Personal's built-in microphone. A stereo instrument cable was required in order to split the guitar signal from the voice before amplification.
The detailed specifications of the Les Paul Personal are also listed, with recommended string heights (action) on the following page. Gibson suggested string set E-340 and stereo cable CRD-1469. The woods listed for this guitar are British Honduras mahogany for the body and neck, ebony for the fretboard and white holly as a headstock veneer.
Interestingly the suggested string set is not the same as for the Professional - set E-340 is medium gauge nickel 'sonomatic' .012-.056 with a wound 3rd.