theFPVgeek
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Has anyone had their Guild M85 II Plek'd? I'm thinking about getting it done.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Are you a good enough player to notice the difference if you do or rich enough to not care about the price?
More the later, but definitely not “rich”.
What does a Plek setup cost?
A regular setup costs $199, and includes new strings, truss rod adjustment, nut slot lowering if needed and a fret level and dress using the Plek. Frets are then hand polished and the intonation and action adjusted as needed.
Bela Pleck and the Plecktones
Note: I’m 65; have been playing guitar since I was 14, and look askance at pretty much every trendy new way of doing things that comes along.
I’ve had many fret jobs over the years, so I know what fret leveling / dressing / crowning — and fret replacement — is all about.
What makes sense to me about Plekking is that it’s a way of leveling the frets that removes ONLY the parts of frets that need to be removed and nothing else.
With a fret level, your luthier sands away the fret metal until all the frets are of uniform height. In so doing a fair amount of fret metal is inevitably removed that didn’t need to be removed.
With Plekking, if the third, fourth, seventh and ninth frets are the problem frets and only in the area of D and G strings, the Plek machine will address only those frets — without touching any of the adjacent frets — and will level only those portions of the frets that need it, not the whole fret.
This means a longer life for your frets, forestalling the need for fret replacement, which is also pretty expensive, especially if you have a guitar with a bound neck.
The luthier near me with a Plek machine had done 684 Pleks since he got his machine (last I talked to him) and said the machine does a much better job than he ever could. (This is a seasoned pro BTW who’s been doing guitar repair for decades.)
It is expensive and I’m not about to take my 60 other guitars in to be Plekked! But the one guitar I did have Plekked, a Goodall, now plays outstandingly well. Before I took it in, it buzzed or noted out on several frets.
So yeah, it’s another newfangled contraption and is expensive to use.
But I recommend not dismissing it out of hand. The idea has merit and what it does, it does very well.
I visited the Santa Cruz factory, can't find the pic of the plecking machine in the very last finishing room but it looks like a very busy Tardis with lots of strange gizmos, Gizmodo I would call it, sort of like the Orgasmatron for guitars... The guitar comes out better than what any luthier can do, which is why a Santa Cruz plays amazing.
Here's a couple other pics of the Santa Cruz factory, R. Hoover with a Brazilian Dread form, old wood hush hush special order stuff, and Tony Rice's guitar in for some tlc.
So why does it cost so much for after market pleking?