These older Japanese Squires are pretty good, they knew how to make them back then.  This one’s just a little worn.

You can always tell how a guitar has been played.  More often than not most of the wear tends to be up at “the paying end”.  this one’s been played right up at the dusty end as well.  Rather than the usual deep notches the fret tops are quite flat, been a lot of blues bend going on there.

The electrics are a little “scratchy” so they’ll need a good clean and one of the pickups isn’t working at all.

It’s also had the trem’ blocked off, the owner wants that put back to normal.

Into the electrics first, well that’s why the pickups wasn’t working, a loose wire.

A good clean sorted out the scratchy pots.

The tone circuit wasn’t working either so I put in a new orange drop cap’

Taking out the block was fairly easy.  Just slacken off the springs and pulled it out.

So back to the neck.  Out with the nut, as carefully as possible.

Tape up the fretboard to protect it while I’m working and level it off.

Using the calibrated beam to grind down the fret tops.

As I start to grind down the frets you can see the low points, the notches at the top…

and the uneven low points further down the neck.

Once the frets are all level, down to the lowest common point they all need to be individually rounded off again.  

and then re-polished.

Back in with the nut.

Since the truss-rod adjustment is on the heel rather than the head it’s impossible to adjust it with the neck on the guitar and strings fitted.  This is where the Neck Jig comes in really handy.  I can string a neck at normal tension and adjust it before fitting it.

I put the trem’ springs back a little to tightly.  The trem’ ended up sitting flat on the body.

so back off the springs a little.

Just enough to allow about a complete tone upward.

The action at the 12th fret was a little low..

so starting with the outside “E” strings a gentle tweek of the saddles.

Once they’ve been set the others can be adjusted to match the radius of the fretboard.

With the playing action right I need to lastly set the intonation.

Only one more thing to do, check the pickup heights.

And there it is, ready for another 30 years…

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