These are normally better than this.!.  If you’re looking for a good starter guitar then I reckon you can do a lot worse than pick up a second-had Ibanez.  Sadly I think this one must have been built on a Friday afternoon!  Still a good looking guitar though…

Mostly it’s fine, It just has a couple of uneven frets…

So I’m going to level them all off with a fret-dress.  First I removed the nut and levelled the neck with the truss-rod…

With that done I taped up the fretboard to protect it and marked the fret-tops with a marker pen.  Using the flat beam I ground down the fret tops until I got to the lowest point.

You can see here, just as I’m starting, the beam has been touching the frets to the right but not the left.

With the tops now even, I re-shaped each fret, to round off the tops.

With the frets even and rounded each one has to be polished to bring back the shine.

I also like to give the fretboard a little lemon oil.

All it needs now is a standard 5 point setup…

No.1  The neck set, just a little high….

So tighten the truss-rod to flatten it out a bit.

No.2  The action at the 12th fret.  Just a shade low….

So raise the bridge just a little.

No.3  The action at the 1st fret.  A little high…..

so file down each string slot in the nut.

No.4  The intonation, to make sure it plays in tune all the way up the neck..

No.5  Lastly then, the pickup heights.

And there we are.  Ready to Rock.  Better than new, how it really should have been…