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By Scott ZimmermanCBS/Fender Musical Instruments - Team leader in the Woodshop and Senior Luthier (1977-1984)
Charvel Jackson Guitars - Factory Supervisor (1984-1986) Charvel Japan - Project Engineer and Supervisor (1986-1990) Fujigen Musical Instruments - Master Builder and Quality Control Engineer (1990-2001) Desert Rose Banjos - Founder (2001 to Present) |
Very little is written about CBS/Fender's unique slide-in sideways fretting style, and quite nothing is written by anyone who performed the job! Every word written in an attempt to explain or document this fretting style has been, at best, authored by someone with second-hand, third-hand, or even less reliable information. Some of the most frequently quoted information was written by someone who never did the job and never saw it done. It was explained to them by someone who worked at the factory years after the fretting style had been discontinued! To my knowledge, that person didn’t do the job either, even while working at the factory.
So, before all connections to first-hand, hands-on experience are lost to time, I want to document this process based on my own first-hand, hands-on experience from years of personally doing this job. To set the groundwork: I started working at Fender in the wood shop, making necks, in the spring of 1977.
I came to Fender and was hired because I was already experienced in formal luthiery work, including craftsman-level fretwork.
On my first day on the job, I was given a tour of the neck-making process, and when shown the sideways fretting, I said nothing. However, the look on my face must have been screaming, because the neck-making foreman, Jimmy Lira, looked at me and immediately began defending the process very strongly. I just gave him a blank stare in return. As it happened, that was the first job Jimmy assigned to me to perform.
And to state for the record Jimmy Lira was a fantastic foreman.
Now to detail the process. It was a two-step process, which most modern writing ignores or skims over. The second step was introduced because the main method of sliding the frets in was problematic and consistently produced unacceptable results.
So, before all connections to first-hand, hands-on experience are lost to time, I want to document this process based on my own first-hand, hands-on experience from years of personally doing this job. To set the groundwork: I started working at Fender in the wood shop, making necks, in the spring of 1977.
I came to Fender and was hired because I was already experienced in formal luthiery work, including craftsman-level fretwork.
On my first day on the job, I was given a tour of the neck-making process, and when shown the sideways fretting, I said nothing. However, the look on my face must have been screaming, because the neck-making foreman, Jimmy Lira, looked at me and immediately began defending the process very strongly. I just gave him a blank stare in return. As it happened, that was the first job Jimmy assigned to me to perform.
And to state for the record Jimmy Lira was a fantastic foreman.
Now to detail the process. It was a two-step process, which most modern writing ignores or skims over. The second step was introduced because the main method of sliding the frets in was problematic and consistently produced unacceptable results.
STEP ONE: SLIDING THE FRETS IN
The fret installation took place at a dedicated workstation; there were two workstations in total. One of them featured a steel table, slightly above waist height. There was a handpiece that fit into the palm of the hand. The underside of the handpiece had a groove and a stopper in it that fit the fret.
This operation required precut frets, with each fret featuring precisely cut ends on the leading edge. Both the fret tang and the fret bead were shaped with a knife edge to facilitate smooth sliding during installation and to prevent damage to the fretboard.
This operation required precut frets, with each fret featuring precisely cut ends on the leading edge. Both the fret tang and the fret bead were shaped with a knife edge to facilitate smooth sliding during installation and to prevent damage to the fretboard.
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This step was also described by the long-time final neck sander at Fender, Brian Hilliker: “The fretting table had a cable system activated by stepping on a foot pedal. A radiused claw block was attached to the cable, with a slot on the bottom of the block to hold the fret wire. A piece of precut fret wire was placed in the block and aligned with the fret slot [with the knife edges facing the neck, Editor’s note]. Pressing the foot pedal slid the fret wire into the slot.”
The fret was not yet fully seated but was firmly positioned within the slot. The fret was not yet fully seated but was firmly positioned within the slot. “The tangs of the frets, when slid into the slots, acted like an additional saw blade, effectively widening the fretboard slot,” said Brian. Necks moved through the woodshop in batches, with each batch consisting of 100 to 200 necks. |
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Step Two, hammering in the frets
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This step is often completely overlooked, yet without it, the entire process wouldn’t work. The sliding is mystical to some uninformed people, who are unaware of the key element that makes the sliding possible.
After the frets were slid in sideways, they were extremely uneven, with gaps underneath the frets ranging from small to large. They, of course, needed to be seated. The method Fender pioneered involved using an arbor press with a precision-machined radius piece to hammer the frets down—not press them. Today, arbor presses with a radius shoe for pressing frets are standard, but this was not the case in the early seventies. Their popularity today stems from people observing Fender's method and adapting it for their own use. This adaptation works perfectly. Fender chose to hammer the frets in for one primary reason: quantity. There simply wasn’t enough time to carefully press the frets flush with the fretboard. |
Arbor Press
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The process involved gripping the handle of the arbor press and using a jackhammer-like motion. Speed was crucial. As the press was operated, the neck was fed into it, establishing a rhythm that allowed each fret to be hammered a couple of times while the neck was continuously moved through. Once all the frets were hammered, the neck was inspected for any frets requiring additional hammering or for those that had been driven too far into the fretboard. Over-hammered frets needed to be carefully pried up, with maple- or rosewood-colored wood putty used to repair the fingerboard as necessary.
Regarding time constraints, every manufacturing job at Fender had a specific time allocation and quantity standard. Each task required a set number of repetitions per hour, clearly defined. Failure to meet these production standards often resulted in being fired.
Someone asked how many necks actually required the arbor press hammering, and the answer is simple: every single one needed it because the sliding process was so inconsistent.
A worker with some level of experience could fret 300 necks a day, handling both the sliding and jackhammering processes. Typically, a person did not perform this job for an entire day. Necks moved through the woodshop in lots of 100 or more, and it was common to work on a batch of necks before switching to another task. This rotation was beneficial, as the sliding process was extremely strenuous on the right hand and arm. The longer the task was performed, the more fatigued the arm became, leading to sloppier work—which, in turn, required more jackhammering to correct.
Someone asked how many necks actually required the arbor press hammering, and the answer is simple: every single one needed it because the sliding process was so inconsistent.
A worker with some level of experience could fret 300 necks a day, handling both the sliding and jackhammering processes. Typically, a person did not perform this job for an entire day. Necks moved through the woodshop in lots of 100 or more, and it was common to work on a batch of necks before switching to another task. This rotation was beneficial, as the sliding process was extremely strenuous on the right hand and arm. The longer the task was performed, the more fatigued the arm became, leading to sloppier work—which, in turn, required more jackhammering to correct.
Final steps
After the frets had been jackhammered, there was a table with one hundred or more necks, each with long lengths of frets sticking out in every direction.
The next step was another head-turner: the neck was run through a metal-cutting bandsaw! The frets were trimmed to about 1/8 inch or slightly less. Since speed was an important guideline, occasionally a fret would be ripped out of the neck, requiring it to be repressed and possibly patched with putty.
So now, there was a table of necks with the frets trimmed down to just a few millimeters, sticking out of the neck. The final step in the fretting process is using a pin router—the same pin router used throughout the wood shop to make necks! The pin router had a 3/4-inch spiral-cut carbide cutter, with a pin to ensure flush cutting to the exact edge of the neck. The neck was fed through the cutter, and both the treble and bass sides had the frets trimmed perfectly flush with the wood. Essentially, that’s the fret installation process for the sliding sideways fret style used by CBS/Fender.
The next step was another head-turner: the neck was run through a metal-cutting bandsaw! The frets were trimmed to about 1/8 inch or slightly less. Since speed was an important guideline, occasionally a fret would be ripped out of the neck, requiring it to be repressed and possibly patched with putty.
So now, there was a table of necks with the frets trimmed down to just a few millimeters, sticking out of the neck. The final step in the fretting process is using a pin router—the same pin router used throughout the wood shop to make necks! The pin router had a 3/4-inch spiral-cut carbide cutter, with a pin to ensure flush cutting to the exact edge of the neck. The neck was fed through the cutter, and both the treble and bass sides had the frets trimmed perfectly flush with the wood. Essentially, that’s the fret installation process for the sliding sideways fret style used by CBS/Fender.
endnotes
There is much debate about the sliding sideways process. In the larger picture, it neither saved time nor money and, without question, was inferior in quality compared to the standard fretting style.
Fast forward to 1982, I was the Fender R&D model maker and Master Builder of guitars. One part of our job in R&D was monitoring factory processes, and we could implement changes in how the instruments were made whenever we felt the need.
One day, the new engineer in R&D came to me and bluntly asked what I thought of the sideways fretting. He came from a famous guitar maker and thought it was as stupid as I did. I told him bluntly how ridiculous it was. He looked me in the eye and asked, “Do you have a better idea?” I instantly replied, “Yes,” even though I had no solid idea at all. He said, “Good, write it up and bring it to me in two days. We will change this now!”
We had just finished the highly significant Vintage Reissue project, and my manufacturing engineering abilities had been awakened. But this was a whole different challenge—stepping in to eliminate one of Fender's iconic processes and replacing it with something I would personally dictate.
Having fretted literally tens of thousands of necks in the sideways style, I was very familiar with the problems. Having learned fretting from acoustic restoration masters, I knew how it should be done and understood the fine points that were needed.
One of the keys to engineering in mass production is that you don’t go in like a bull in a China shop, freehand trash everything, and start over from zero unless it's the only option. So, I went back to the wood shop, watched them fret the necks, studied carefully what was already in place, and formulated a process in my head on how to do the job with what was already there, while eliminating the sideways fretting process.
I returned to the wood shop after they went home for the day and fretted a bunch of necks using my ideas. It was perfect: the speed was faster than the entire sideways process, the quality surpassed anything Fender had been doing for a decade, and it was easy and foolproof. I submitted the process; it was accepted, and the sideways fretting style was dead forever. And the cherry on top is that today, 42 years later, they are fretting Fender guitars and basses exactly as I dictated.
As soon as the system was instituted, the manufacturing engineers examined it and immediately began designing and building a machine to do the exact job I had designed, but fully automated. Until the Fullerton factory closed at the end of 1984, they worked on that machine, but it was a failure—it couldn’t match my quality. When production shifted to the Corona factory, they began using a fully automated machine that frets exactly as I designed, and it works perfectly. It’s a legacy I’m very proud of.
Fast forward to 1982, I was the Fender R&D model maker and Master Builder of guitars. One part of our job in R&D was monitoring factory processes, and we could implement changes in how the instruments were made whenever we felt the need.
One day, the new engineer in R&D came to me and bluntly asked what I thought of the sideways fretting. He came from a famous guitar maker and thought it was as stupid as I did. I told him bluntly how ridiculous it was. He looked me in the eye and asked, “Do you have a better idea?” I instantly replied, “Yes,” even though I had no solid idea at all. He said, “Good, write it up and bring it to me in two days. We will change this now!”
We had just finished the highly significant Vintage Reissue project, and my manufacturing engineering abilities had been awakened. But this was a whole different challenge—stepping in to eliminate one of Fender's iconic processes and replacing it with something I would personally dictate.
Having fretted literally tens of thousands of necks in the sideways style, I was very familiar with the problems. Having learned fretting from acoustic restoration masters, I knew how it should be done and understood the fine points that were needed.
One of the keys to engineering in mass production is that you don’t go in like a bull in a China shop, freehand trash everything, and start over from zero unless it's the only option. So, I went back to the wood shop, watched them fret the necks, studied carefully what was already in place, and formulated a process in my head on how to do the job with what was already there, while eliminating the sideways fretting process.
I returned to the wood shop after they went home for the day and fretted a bunch of necks using my ideas. It was perfect: the speed was faster than the entire sideways process, the quality surpassed anything Fender had been doing for a decade, and it was easy and foolproof. I submitted the process; it was accepted, and the sideways fretting style was dead forever. And the cherry on top is that today, 42 years later, they are fretting Fender guitars and basses exactly as I dictated.
As soon as the system was instituted, the manufacturing engineers examined it and immediately began designing and building a machine to do the exact job I had designed, but fully automated. Until the Fullerton factory closed at the end of 1984, they worked on that machine, but it was a failure—it couldn’t match my quality. When production shifted to the Corona factory, they began using a fully automated machine that frets exactly as I designed, and it works perfectly. It’s a legacy I’m very proud of.
