Video: Sideways Fret Removal

I wrote a little bit, ages ago, about refretting a Fender neck that'd had it's frets installed sideways. This was pretty much the standard way of doing things in Fender right up until 1982. It's a little unusual—generally, frets are hammered or pressed in from the top of the fingerboard but Fender 'pushed' frets along the slot from the side of the neck.

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain of the thinking behind this practice. Given that Leo Fender was the Henry Ford of guitars, there was likely a terribly good rationale related to production-line speed, efficiency or consistency.

Whatever, the reason, it's important to be aware of this practice if you want to remove the frets. Pulling out these frets from the top of the board (as you'd normally do) will rip out big chunks of fingerboard. 

Tap them out the way they went in, however… That makes for a lovely, clean fret removal.

Actually, these particular frets were even more easily removed than I'm making it look in the video. I was tapping a little more daintily than normal in a, failed, attempt to prevent the camera shaking. Sorry for the camera jitters.