Can the nibs be saved?

metropolis_4

Shredder
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2,182
My LP is going to need a refret soon and I’m dreading it because I don’t want to lose the nibs!

Is there any way a refret can be done without losing them?
 
Yes a refret can be done without losing them, but expect to pay more to have it done.

To me they make no sense in the first place so I'd just lose them.
 
Glad to hear they can be saved!

I love them and they’re super practical to me so I’d gladly pay more to keep them.

Now to find someone to do the job…
 
I just watched a restoration vid the other day and saw how they’re made. Really surprised me, I always thought they were like caps that fit over the fret. I can certainly understand a preference for keeping them. This is a pretty good video on the process.

 
Yes and the video shows how BUT. The nibs In the video large and in good condition, if you want tall frets you have to decide what is the best way of trying to get the two to meet. In the video the nibs are tall and he still needed to over trim the frets at the edges creating a radius mismatch with the fingerboard and loss of fret hight . Gibson often over scrape the binding in the first place doing this even more. You then have a choice of making some binding filler or having to round the fret end where it meets the nib loosing width. Filler on narrow binding has problems adhering to the very small contact and can look poor. If you loose them you can properly level the fingerboard and reclaim the full width. I get the dilemma though and have done quite a lot of refrets with the binding saved over the years . The last consideration is you have to keep the original fret size and the fingerboard will need to have no issues that require attention.
 
At 12:15 in that video gave me flashbacks of this guy:



I found a vocal forum a few years back, TheRangePlace, it’s full of a bunch of kids doing shit like that. It was one of the stranger things I’ve seen, just a bunch of people making noises into a mic to hit certain pitches while being completely unusable in a singing sense or technique but celebrating when they hit super high ones.
 
I was going to post this video as well because it goes into a lot of stuff Eagle mentions above in regards to the downside of keeping the nibs. Might be worth a watch for ya, Metro.

 
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Yes and the video shows how BUT. The nibs In the video large and in good condition, if you want tall frets you have to decide what is the best way of trying to get the two to meet. In the video the nibs are tall and he still needed to over trim the frets at the edges creating a radius mismatch with the fingerboard and loss of fret hight . Gibson often over scrape the binding in the first place doing this even more. You then have a choice of making some binding filler or having to round the fret end where it meets the nib loosing width. Filler on narrow binding has problems adhering to the very small contact and can look poor. If you loose them you can properly level the fingerboard and reclaim the full width. I get the dilemma though and have done quite a lot of refrets with the binding saved over the years . The last consideration is you have to keep the original fret size and the fingerboard will need to have no issues that require attention.

Thanks for that info!

Do you know if Gibson has been using cheaper fret wire the past few years? This LP is only 3 years old and it feels like I’ve eaten through these frets really fast. But I have played hundreds of shows during that time so maybe it’s normal
 
Thanks for that info!

Do you know if Gibson has been using cheaper fret wire the past few years? This LP is only 3 years old and it feels like I’ve eaten through these frets really fast. But I have played hundreds of shows during that time so maybe it’s normal
It’s probably fairly normal. There’s a lot of things involved in fret wear so I can’t really say without seeing you play and looking at the guitar myself.
 
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