Guitar Refretting and Fret Replacement

When to refret a guitar? What exactly is guitar refretting, why is it necessary, when to consider it, and what is the result?

In some cases, it's enough to play around with the string height or adjust the fretboard, and the buzzing can be eliminated. However, sometimes this unwanted sound remains and you don't know what to do.

The cause can also be in the frets. In most mass-produced guitars, only a basic fret wire is used for the frets.

It doesn't have that much hardness and can wear out quickly with frequent playing. Various irregularities appear on the surface, which can also affect the final sound of your playing.

However, a similar issue does not always have to occur only after long-term use - some completely new and unused guitars may simply have poorly adjusted frets from the factory - or they may not be properly leveled.

As part of our services, Aura Instruments offers you the option of guitar refretting - whether it's one fret at a time or all frets - including the replacement of the nut.

The workflow for refretting is as follows:

- depending on the agreement, the individual original frets on the guitar are either leveled and crowned so that they are on a designated plane, preventing a situation where one of the frets has a different height than it should - because this is precisely one of the reasons why some notes lose their sound.

If you choose this option, we will, of course, gladly accommodate you. However, we always assess the condition of your frets and their quality, and accordingly propose an alternative: whether it is worth investing in leveling the original frets, or if it is better to consider replacing them with new ones.

This exact replacement with new frets can have these advantages for you:

• as we mentioned - most mass-produced guitars use frets made mostly of softer steel, which leads to more frequent wear and irregularities on their surface
• for refretting and fret replacement, we use professional steel fret wire, which has high hardness, and it is highly probable that such frets will not need to be replaced again
• we perform fret replacement in a way that improves the original characteristics of the instrument, making its sound more brilliant

And this is what guitar refretting looks like in practice :)