Hi
I've been working on a neck, which has been a tough experience so far. Everything went smoothly from the neck back shaping, to the fingerboard and nut gluing, fret cutting to the neck carving.
Now, I've hammered in all my frets, but some of them needed some serious leveling. Hammering isn't accurate at all, i'll give you that!
The slots were clean, for what it's worth.
Anyway, I have been using straightedge and radius sanding/leveling block to determine the overly high frets. After pinpointing them, I "sorta" successfully flatted them out using a straight file. Now, I'm stuck with frets that literally have no crown on them.
Can I get the round shape back? Do square frets cause tone problems? (I imagine)
Also, I'm not sure if I'll ever get all the frets exactly level. It's really tough getting them *exactly level". All I can do is take the sanding block and check all the fret tops "touch" the sanding block. That's the best I can do at this point.
Also, what causes fret buzzing, as far as fretting goes? Is it when a fret is higher than a previous one?
When I fret a note, the string should NOT touch (even barely) any of the following frets right? Or else that will cause buzzing?
It's hard to tell whether or not the neck will cause any buzzing problems, until i hook the bridge up, adjust saddle height etc...some of the frets at the end may very well be 0.01" higher than the ones coming before. If there's a little buzz coming from it, then I won't mind, but if the note is choked completely then that's a problem!
What do you think? What would cause a note (even open string) to not sustain at all?
Thanks for the help, and if you have any advice to give me, I'll appreciate it greatly!