A lovely guitar, just not quite as good as you would hope…

The nut slots have been widened out and then repaired, rather badly.  The only real way to fix that is to replace the nut.

Some of the frets are a little un-even, so I’m going to dress them to get a common level.

 First thing then, out with the old nut…

 level and tape up the fretboard……

 As usual I’m using a calibrated level beam with 320 grit sandpaper..

 You can see when I started, the middle 2 frets was rather high but there were some quite low points on the outside ones…

 Once the tops are all at a common level each one has to be rounded off again.

and then re-polished with 4 grades of micromesh…

Once that was done, back to that nut…

Since the guitar has a zero fret the nut can be a little lower so I took 4 or 5mm off the top…

With the new nut fitted it’s time to re-fit the neck and carry out a standard 5 point setup.

1. The neck set:  Since the truss-rod adjustment is on the bottom of the neck I needed to put it on the jig.  That way I can adjust the set with strings at full tension.

There it is…

2. Action at the 12th Fret:

It was just a little high so I dropped the bridge saddles a little, starting with the outside strings…

and then the others, matching the radius of the fretboard…

3. The action at the 1st fret:  Quite simple here since there’s that zero fret.  Just so long as the strings sit on it, which they weren’t with the old nut…

4. The Intonation:  The position of the saddles along the line of the string…

5. The pickup heights: To make sure the outputs are balanced..

 So there we are.  All done and ready to Rock and Roll with the very best of them…

A word or two from the owner:

“just had my burns marquee special done had new nut and fret dress new strings and full setup it now sounds and feels beautiful many thanks george.” steve