Ideally, your inlays will be at the same level as your fretboard. By gently sanding them with a nail file or sandpaper, you can get them at the same level so your fretboard is smooth. Take care as you sand down the tops of the inlays not to sand the fretboard itself in the process. Use a light touch. If you're using regular sandpaper, use the finest grit possible, grit extra fine or even finer.
Clean and polish the fretboard. After you're done sanding, gently wipe all the dust off your fretboard. Take care that there isn't any dust gathered along the edges of the frets. Then, rub in a fretboard oil to give it a like-new shine. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. If you're also planning on replacing the frets, replace the inlays while the old frets are off.
That way, you don't have to worry about damaging any frets while you're working. Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. If you don't have experience in guitar repair, take it to an experienced guitar tech or luthier to replace the inlays rather than trying to do it on your own. You could damage the fretboard. Related wikiHows How to. How to.
More References 5. About This Article. Co-authored by:. Co-authors: 4. Updated: August 9, Categories: Guitar. A slightly scallop effect is common past the 12th fret. There just isn't enough travel distance for the sanding stick. Trim down the width of the stick if need be and change the paper out a lot. Most of the above suggestions pertain to real Mother of Pearl inlays that you noted in the OP. Good luck. BobPoomba Member. Cool project. I say if you're gonna go through this then yea get some sweet mother of pearl or abalone too.
Oh yeah, one last trick: Use a brown Sharpie not a Marks-a-lot or other, trust me to "brown" the edges of the shell prior to inlaying.
This will help hide gaps. Jan Folkson Member. I get asked to do this kind of crazy stuff every now and again. I'm usually able to talk my clients out of this type of project. First off, with all due respect, replacing existing inlays is a very different job than going from dots to traps. Removing the frets vs. If it's a bound neck that has nibs, you need to make a choice if you want to retain nibs or not.
If you do, the fret job becomes more complicated expensive. The job is easier with the frets out of the way, but removing them ISN'T necessary. As Ron mentioned, you want the inlay cavity to be flat, which means that you can't use the board or the existing frets as a base for your router. You need to build a jig that needs to remain perpendicular to the centerline of the neck.
If it's a les paul type that has inlays past where the neck meets the body, the jig will need to accommodate that as well. Another option for the routing and one I haven't tried would be do radius the bottom of the cavity following the board or existing frets, AND radius the underside of the new inlays to match.
You can use a safety scraper to radius the new inlays once they're in, but Ron's method sounds pretty great. Rosewood dust and ca glue will help clean up the gaps. I'm sure there are other methods as well. The original inlays appeared to be some sort of plastic, with an aged yellow look: Kirk brought a set of pearl inlays he wanted installed, so I first checked them all by laying them on top of the fingerboard and made sure they mostly lined up with the old inlays.
Now that I was able to accurately measure how low the bit needed to be, the rest of the inlays came out a lot cleaner: Unfortunately, the old inlays were much thicker than the new pearl inlays, so I had to add a shim to each one. Once satisfied with the fit, I glued them all down, and then filled the edges with black superglue: This next part would have been easy if I had been doing this during the refret process.
Each inlay sits up a little higher than the fingerboard: Normally these would get sanded down flat when the fingerboard was being planed flat, and would be radiused right along with the fingerboard.
Benjamin Strange I am a musician, guitar tech, and founder of Strange Guitarworks. Instagram strangeguitarworks. An organized shop indicates an organized mind. Shields up! Electrostatic shielding can help mitig. Aaron taps some fresh threads onto a broken truss.
You can play both kinds of music on this guitar. Partial shims and neck tilt adjustments cause neck. We work on a ton of Telecasters. A TON. We often w. Felt cute. Might get a PLEK fret level and some ne. A twelve string nut is born.
The devil is in the details. One of the coolest and easiest mods to do on your guitar is replace the inlays. Most people may shudder to think about drilling out the existing inlays of the neck, but with some instruction and a bit of patience, this article can help you learn one way of doing it yourself.
In , I built a guitar now known affectionately as the Mermaid Strat. I wanted to keep the build easy, so I decided to buy a pre-made neck from AllParts. You can find a selection of guitar necks on Reverb too. However, I really wanted abalone inlays, and I decided to replace them myself. It's better to have a neck with no frets and quite possibly, no finish on it, but if you are replacing inlays on your existing neck, then go slow and be careful not to mess up your frets with the various tools you'll be using.
This is not the correct procedure for a fretboard that has been finished over like a maple neck with a lacquer finish. This tutorial is mainly for rosewood and ebony fretboards. What may surprise you when dealing with dot inlays is that they can come in varying sizes. For example, taking a brief look at StewMac's inlay section shows varying sizes of varying types of inlays.
The first thing you need to do is measure your inlay diameter, most likely in millimeters. Use a set of digital calipers to do this. Then you'll need to order a set. Order enough inlays to cover all the dots on your neck, plus a few extra. If for some reason when you are putting an inlay in it breaks or shatters during filing, you will be thankful that you have extras.
I ordered the cool abalone inlays above from AllParts, which are 6. Be sure to secure the neck of your guitar in some way so that it doesn't wobble around while working.
A proper neck rest will secure the neck near the nut and you may want to prop the neck joint up as well. For the second time, measure the existing size of the inlay dots and find the appropriate sized drill bit slightly smaller than the inlay you want to drill out.
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