DIY

Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage! After inspecting the neck of our Harley Benton guitar in last month’s column, it’s time now to dive into transforming a good neck into a great one.

I always start by inspecting and checking the frets. Our guitar sports 21 frets that are in the medium-jumbo ballpark, noticeably wider than the standard Fender vintage frets. The fret job was done very well; the final polish of the frets could be better, but more about this later. All of our fret ends are nicely rounded, with no sharp bits anywhere. After checking the levelling with a straight edge, though, I was brought down to earth again: high spot alarm! After a closer examination with a fret rocking tool, our alarm was lowered to a nuisance alert: Exactly one fret was noticeably higher compared to the rest, and because it was obviously crowned, I checked this one even closer. It turned out that it wasn’t hammered in completely, and after three taps with the fretting hammer, the problem was solved. This is something I see a lot; often, it’s only one or two frets on the fretboard and our Harley Benton was no exception.

After another check with the straight edge, I was more than satisfied with the fret job—no further work necessary here. While checking the maple cap fretboard, I noticed that the clearcoat on frets two, three, and four wasn’t as polished as the rest, leaving these spots on the board feeling a bit raw. It took me five minutes to polish these spots with super-fine MicroMesh, and the problem was gone. Next, I noticed a gap where the fake skunk stripe meets the neck heel: While the end of the skunk stripe is rectangular, the routing in the neck heel is round. Usually, my inner monk would instantly come alive to correct this, but this time, I decided to leave it alone; it doesn’t affect our playability in any way, and it’s not even visible.