Fret Leveling: Have you had enough of the shoody work you pay shops to do?
You do not have to put up with that.
You can run circles around even the best shops doing it yourself with the FretMaestro System.

Stop buying into The Hundred-Year Argument – “It’s been done this way for more than a hundred years, it ain’t broke, it don’t need no fixin’.” By this logic, sell your car and buy a horse and buggy.

 

Fret Leveling Precision Vs Guesswork:

Today’s demanding players want true precision fret leveling, not the long tired just-good-enough result gotten from traditional sanding beams, or smoke and mirrors ill-conceived CNC fret leveling machines.

Both sanding beams and CNC fret machines bulldoze fret crowns flat. This then requires using eyeball guesswork crowning files to attempt reconstructing the inexcusably destroyed crowns.

There is no other trade that uses tools and methods that the first step is to destroy the workpiece.
No other trade on earth would call this method; master craftsmanship.

Every other trade adopts advanced modern tools to maximize workflow and precision to make more money by delivering a product that makes customers say, "WOW—Awesome”.

But for over a hundred years, the guitar industry has been gatekeeping the fret mayhem circus in defense of a romanticized illusion of artisan craftsmanship.

And it doesn't make business sense to slave away only to produce ballpark results; contrary to sworn good intentions this neither demonstrates nor proves dedication to artisan craftsmanship. Instead, it burns through billable bench hours, cutting shop revenue in half and more, and delivers to the customer what any other trade would label shoddy work that alienates more customers than it keeps.

SixStringers precision adamantly rejects this historical mayhem:

• No more Destruction.

• FretMaestro Radius and FretMaestro Omni Pro diamond cutting cores index precision level and crown in a single step using multiple file passes. This process is not a rapid shortcut; it is a rigid geometric calibration sequence that handles levelling and crown forms simultaneously.

• Perfection takes time. As the proverb goes; "Why is there never enough time to do the job right the first time, but always enough time to do the job over?"

• No bulldozed frets, no eyeball guesswork, no gatekeeper intimidation games.

• Precision commands premium financial rewards.

• Transparency replaces deception.

The smart play for the shop is to charge Premium pricing that reflects complete, precise mastery unachievable via sanding beams or CNC fret machines, securing maximum profitability and a stellar professional reputation that brings in the kind of customer every self-respecting shop not only wants but needs in order to build sustainable success.

Success is not a game of cut-throat $150 hack jobs padded with sneaky add-ons that anger customers.

Success is winning over discerning clientele demanding absolute excellence and who are happy to pay for it because everyone worth being a customer knows that traditional fretwork is long past its expiration date.

What is Precision Fret work?

• Every fret is exactly the same height across its radius and from fret to fret.

• Tracking the fretboard radius is what shapes the fret radius.

• Referencing the fretboard the Maestro’s set depth if cut stops when it bottoms out, ensuring a .0005” tolerance fret height. It cannot cut deeper than the selected setting.

• There are twelve depth-of-cut setting in .003” increments. Using the tape method we are able to dial in to .0015” depth-of-cut, effectively qualifying twenty-four depth-of-cut settings in .0015” increments.

• The Radius Maestro bridges over localized wood wear to reference the unworn high ground, ensuring absolute accuracy even when the fretboard has deep play grooves.

• The Omni Pro is a straight Maestro that works on almost all guitars because it is rare that finger and string wear gets closer than .125" to the fret on the wearing nut side.

• If the fret radius does not match the fretboard radius, it should be a no-brainer to know that without this the frets cannot be level.

• All crowns must match vs the random mismatches guaranteed by eyeball guesswork freehand crowning.

Why True Level Frets completely change the game:

• It is the only way to then cut true precision nut slots based on the reference fret perfectly matching the fretboard radius Vs asymmetrical one side higher than the other or the middle higher which is exactly what one gets from sanding beams and guesswork crowning.

• Now with True Level Frets that make it real to achieve True Symmetrical Nut Slots it is possible to set the perfect True Symmetrical String Action.

• And now the magic that everyone snarks at, not because they are right, but because they bought into a hundred years of fantastical tales. The neck relief is set to zero, exactly the way it is designed to be. And this is only possible with True Level Frets, True Nut Slots and True String Action all being in sync with the fretboard radius.

The Truth Behind the "Neck Relief" Myth:
The fantastical tale sold by luthiers and guitar techs is that neck relief is to make room for the strings to vibrate in an oval pattern…it is pure and deliberate misdirection.
The truth is more nefarious:
Neck relief has long been used to compensate for the collective errors of traditional tools and methods. Because the frets are not actually level, not from fret to fret and not across the fretboard radius, and so the nut slots are not symmetrical with the fretboard radius, and so then follows that the string action is also not symmetrical with the fretboard radius… one after the other the errors pile up, and trying to sort out the inevitable fret buzz and early fret outs, and nose dive sustain, is a nightmare circle jerk of chasing one’s own tail.
And so being clever they decided to take the shortcut and crank up the headstock to create an in-bow they named Neck Relief, a convincing name having that ring of authenticity to it.
But look, in plain sight, Neck relief raises the string action, and at the same time whatever nut slot heights were intended is also instantly negated.
Well, okay, it was never right to begin with, so not a big loss… Neck Relief was, is, and always will be a losing proposition to begin with because sanding beams and those illusory CNC fret machines cannot form true level frets.

Bottom line of a Maestroed Guitar: NO TRADE-OFFS:

• Cleanest clearest intonation

• Softest smoothest fastest play

• Easy two whole note bends that never fret out

• Sustain for days.

The CNC Frert Machine: Sounds awesome on paper.
But before accepting things at surface value, you need know what is required to build a reliable CNC machine.

• 1^st the machine must be rigid to prevent the cutter from shifting under load.

• 2^nd the machine must be heavy to absorb and dampen vibration. Vibration = random poor precision

• 3^rd the workpiece must be absolutely securely mounted to prevent flex, lift, and shift.

• 4^th the cutter head must be in perfect tram to the work plane.

• The CNC fret machine is none of the above:

• The framing is hollow lightweight aluminum profile connected by nuts and bolts.

• The framing does not have the requisite weight to comprise a legitimate CNC machine.

• It gets worse, the workpiece, the guitar, is mounted on a swinging door, there is neither rigidity nor weight there.

• The workpiece, the guitar is mounted by two U supports, one at the headstock, the other around the 12^th fret, and then the body is strapped to a non-adjustable base, meaning, and this is critical, the backside of guitar bodies are not flat, so to mount them in tram without tram adjusters is impossible.

• WHAT IS TRAM: think about plumb. Using a level to set a stud vertical, that is half tram, to make true tram the stud must be plumbed north to south and east to west. The CNC fret machine does not have this because setting it in true tram would take many hours.

• And so without tram the guitar neck is not aligned on true plane to the cutter head, the result, verifiable by measuring, is that one side of all frets will be taller.

• It gets worse, the neck is wood, it flexes under load just as it does when playing the guitar. It is supported only at the body, the 12^th and at the headstock… leaving long spans between support. The cutter head presses down when cutting, the deeper the cut the more press, meaning the more the neck flexes and deflects away from the cutter. This is verifiable by measuring the fret results, they are not all the same height off the fretboard, they do not match the fretboard radius, they are in fact NOT LEVEL.

Knowing how CNC actually behaves prevents being duped by the Gee-whiz Smoke and Mirror Con of the CNC fret level devices the use computer graphics Vs real world result as the sales engine.
A pretty graph on a computer screen is one thing, the hard mechanical realities are another. The onscreen graph is meaningless when the hardware is wonky, and make no mistake, the hardware on these CNC fret machines is irrefutably wonky.

How this information outrages the market is actually obvious:
Those that gatekeep sanding beam workflow will present obscure misdirection, they will say, oh the neck wood moves and moves (as if it were a pile of maggots on a carcass) while completely glossing over that if this were true it would also negate their sanding beam efforts. They will argue that guitar necks are never true, uh huh, and if this were true would a guitar be a guitar? They will argue that matching the fret radius to the fretboard radius is not important, never once mentioning that when the fret radius does not match the fretboard radius this explicitly means that the fret(s) are not level. Traditional shops fabricate any story that crosses their mind and present these in an absolute passionate convincing tone of certainty, convincing tone, not convincing facts. Geometry, math, and physics, these are the facts, not hollow arguments made by self-righteous indignation gatekeeping outdated archaic tools, methods, and thinking.

The CNC fret machine guys, well they invested $250,00 and more, went through a steep learning curve on computer graphics manipulations, and by the time they realize the flaws of the machine’s hardware it is too late. They are so deep in that for them to financially survive they must become walking talking billboard proponents of the flawed system, if not, if they tell the truth, they face financial ruin.

The challenge is not to take sides, that does not serve the truth.
The challenge is to study the physical facts with an eye open for honest insights that only challenging the status quo can reveal in broad daylight.

The hundred-year argument – “It’s been done this way for more than a hundred years, it ain’t broke, it don’t need no fixin’.” By this logic, sell your car and buy a horse and buggy.