This proved to be an odd one.  I’ve always rated Ibanez very highly, if you’re looking for a starter guitar you can’t do much better than a second hand Ibanez.  This one proved to be a little more troublesome though….

At first thought it had a couple of high frets at the top end…

but when I looked more closely the neck was falling away just above the 3rd fret…The 2nd and 3rd frets aren’t high, the first 2 are very low!  You can see daylight at the top of the neck here…..

I measured the gap at the 1st fret at about 0.015″.  Since that’s about what I would set as the action at the 1st fret no wonder it was buzzing at the top end and wouldn’t play properly.

 My initial plan was to dress the frets down to the lowest common point but that would leave the 3rd fret almost flat?  I had a think and a look around the workshop and came up with an idea.  I’ve got some Jumo fret-wire which is about 0.015 taller than the frets on this guitar!  It’s a little wider but I don’t think you’ll notice if you don’t know…

So I pulled the 1st two frets….and replaced them with the higher fret wire…With those in place a standard fret dress to level everything….With the tops level, re-crown each fret…and re-polish….Since the 1st couple of frets are now quite a bit higher the nut will need bringing up a little as well….

Once the basics are done everything gets a good clean… and a dash of lemon oil on the bare wood, you can see the difference immediately…

With it all back together and new strings lastly a 5 point setup…

No1: Neck set, a little high…

so a turn or two on the truss-rod…No.2: Action at the 12th fret…

very high so lower the bridge.  As each saddle is individually adjustable I’ll start with the outside “E” strings…then work inwards to match the radius of the fretboard..

No.3: Action at the 1st fret..

With the shim it was about right, just a shave here and there….No.4: The intonation.  Always important if you want it to sound in tune all along the neck…

No.5:  The pickup heights.  Something that can only really be done by ear.  You’ve got to see how it sounds….

Another one ready to Rock ‘N’ Roll…