Hey guys, Iām going to be absent for a week or so in a few days - having to put the Blues on hold and spend some quality time with the family on vacation. I thought this would be a really good time to send one of my guitars to the shop for a tune-up (in the car sense, not musically).
As well as the Blues when Iāve done my practice routines and Iām jamming on backing tracks I like to try and learn some of the soloās from the tunes Iāve been strumming for years. I noticed the last few weeks that trying to do some longer, slower bends on my Strat, or even doing bends further than just a tone (think Gilmour and PInk Floyd) that my fingers really start to slide under the strings.
I checked the string height of my PRS and ESP and they were both sitting happily around 1.5mm on the low E string. The strat was above 2mm. So, out came the tools, I tried to straighten the neck a bit (quarter turns on the truss rod) but that just caused the lower frets to buzz. I tried to lower the saddles - same problem. I took it to my local guitar shop who I have trusted to do work in the past with no problems at all - and they called me up and said they couldnāt figure out the problem. Their recommendation - was to get my Strat PLEKād.
After Googling said process and finding some very helpful videos on YouTube about it - I took my beloved custom build Strat to Peach Guitars in Essex who will wave their PLEK wands and hopefully clean up the issues with evern a slightly low action causing buzzing at the lower frets.
Have any of you gone this far to get a guitar setup or is this all foreign to you? Iād be interested to know if youāve had a guitar PLEKād how it came out.
Hi James,
If you enter āplekā in the search box you will come across different experiences if all goes wellā¦ hopefully that will be of some use to you,
Greetings,Rogier
They did look at the frets and said nothing seemed to be amiss there which I was glad to hear as Iāve not played this guitar as much as the others thanks to the more rock centric sets Iāve played in the past.
The PLEK machine measures the height of all your frets once the neck is set up in a good / almost straight position and can even trim them so you get a faux compound radius flatting them out a bit more at the dusty end of the neck to make bending up there easier.
Iāll get a call from the team when itās been scanned do discuss options so fingers crossed.
Mmm Iād find a different shop. For starters truss rod adjustments do not change the action only the relief. You need to set the relief first as per the manufacturers recommendation, then adjust the action. That might mean adjusting each strings bridge and/or filing the nut.
If you do all that and you still get some buzz get a straight metal rule and check that the frets are level. Then dress any that donāt, a soft mallet may be all you need for that. You can do all that at home but even the most basic of shop techs should be able to do it blind folded. Suggesting a plek seems way over the top unless they are getting a kick back, coz boy it aināt cheap. Enjoy the holiday.
I could reach out to the original guy who made it but itās a one-man operation, not Fender ,so doubt there would be recommendations on an ad hoc basis after a few years of construction.
I should add, as this is the first guitar I would rescue in a house fire then another few hundred pounds which I didnāt have to spend to get the Fender Custom Shop iteration will be money well spent if it comes back singing.
If you have gone down the plek route it should come back singing and dancing. Still seems OTT for what should be a normal analysis and fix even for a one off custom made guitar.
JMHO YMMV
I donāt think it was a normal fix - Iāve played guitar for nearly 40 years off and on and having a dad who was an engineer by trade, I was not afraid to get the tools out to fix things myself. I donāt have a true straight edge long enough to measure if any frets are poking up a bit too much but the rest of setting up a new guitar Iāve done enough times to know this needed a professional to look at it - and I do trust my local shop who have diagnosed issues seemingly worse than a too-high action before so will be interested to see what the PLEK guys come up with to fix this if they can.
Thank you all for your comments and insight though - this is a great community and I feel delighted to be part of it for all your experience and suggestions,
A straight edge that covers 4 or 5 frets will do, not the whole neck. Add that one to the tool kit for the future. If one is proud that rule will rock and you know a fret is proud. Simples.
Iāve recently had my LP59 copy PLEKād. My main reason for doing it were worn frets.
In 3 words - āBetter than Newā.
Unbelievable difference in playability; I was blown away. It really felt like a fine tuned instrument in my hands. And I thought it sounded OK before, apart from the progressing fretwear.
Had a new bone nut put in as well, which is a good idea if youāre reprofiling your fretboard. Twenty or or so other maintenence checks etc done as well, as part of the overall setup process.
Iāve come to understand though, from talking to some professional musician guys, that the real power and value in PLEKing is in the quality of the luthier programming and operating it. Its an insanely precise machine thatāll operate at 1/1000th mm accuracy, but its the series of decisions made by the luthier thatāll determine the final quality of the result. My local guys are somewhat PLEK experts, with w 2 machines, and have done literally 10000+ PLEK jobs. Iāve never heard of a bad PLEK experience though.
Be interested to see what you think when you get your Strat back.
Not 4 or 5! You want to check frets 3 at a time. When doing this, you need to remember the result of the checks on either side of the three as well so you can really determine if the one on the center is high or the one on the outer edge is low. Notice this has 4 different length sides to let you just look at three frets at a time.
A āfret rockerā is what the tool is called, and it is probably worth buying so you know what your fretboard looks like and help your decision about what to do about it. Iāll use an amazon link, but you can probably find these in a lot of places online or local.
You also need to check in at least three locations along each fret, so I tend to look next to string 1, between 3 and 4, and next to 6. My PRS had a buzz I could not fix with relief or reasonable action adjustments. I gave in and decided to file them myself. My file skills were a bit poor for rounding the fret nicely, but it doesnāt buzz now, even if I have the action is set super low.
Hi, Shane thank you for that feedback. As for the real power coming from the person programming and running the machine I completely agree. I found 3 PLEK machines here in the UK and searched reviews from people who had used them and this store had nothing but 5-star reviews on the website and elsewhere so I hope thatās a good omen.
every guitar has its built-in straight edge itās called one of the strings capo on the first fret finger or second capo on the last job done, works every time my friend cheers HEC
The shop called me this afternoon after their team looked at the guitar and ran it through the PLEK to diagnose the problems. On human inspection the nut was cut too high - the frets were all level - so a simple chisel should solve the problem, but the PLEK machine diagnosed a slight twist in the neck - nothing that could be seen and so may not have caused an issue but one that could be fixed easily now itās diagnosed and when I get it back next week should be playing like butter.
Having the PLEK able to diagnose problems is as valuable as having it carve up your frets and nut to fix them, it seems to me. And much cheaper as well
I agree that the PLEK is an easy way to detect a twist in the neck but there are other methods that can do that. Itās more that the PLEK can also correct the problem in situ, whereas other methods couldnāt.
To clarify the other methods, I mean to set it up on a surface table and test points on the fingerboard with a Dial test indicator to check the variations. This would be a fairly lengthy process but equally capable of detecting the problem.
