[Johnnymic7]

For the hell of it , I bought an Affinity Squier Telecaster, ive always wanted a tele. The guitar (amazingly enough) sounds great, even unplugged. However the damn thing is straight from a box from guitar center. The frets are enough to cut your arm off on the ends, the wood is cleary dry as hell. Anyway im going to rehumidfy the guitar somehow, and im hoping to maybe finish the unfinished fretboard. Is there any basic finish products i can use from home depot and such?

[737blues]

Re-humidifying is something you might do to an acoustic guitar but not a solid body. Not sure what you mean by an unfinished fretboard? If it's maple, I imagine it would have a polyurethane finish. Anyhow, if you do need finishing materials for guitars I would have a look here.

http://home.flash.net/~guitars/

[joemerc]

hi my friend,try dressing your frets with some lemon oil,can be bought from any good guitar shop,just put plenty of it on as it just soaks in,but you may have to remove your strings to do it

[faelin]

I agree w/ joemerc. The guitar in my picture was a kit, and the frerboard was like sand paper. Ouch! So I went to my friendly local guitar shop to ask why...
they told that the board need to be conditioned. They turned me on to a product called lizard spit. It's orange or lemon oil, basiclly. Apply it, then when it soaks in, re-apply it, and so on until it stops soaking, then wipe the rest away. Then (this is BIG), whenever you change strings (i do mine about every 4-6 weeks) re-apply it since the strings are already off. In fact, I make it a point that since the strings are already off to polish and clean the whole guitar. It is important to keep up on the fretboard.. if it gets too dry it will crack and split, pushing the already jumbo frets out of the wood... no thanks.
as far as the frets themselves go... mine are way to big too. Thereby the action is higher than I'd like, eventually I will take to a PRO to have them filed down. Don't try to do it yourself unless you are qualified.
Hope this has helped. Happy playing!

[Seth F. Ullman]

Hi Johnnymic7 -

I also bought an Affinity Tele from GC in New York (City) and mine had bad fret sprout as well. It's been a real dry winter!

By the way, the necks on these are finished with a light satin polyurethane, so if you go to add finish keep in mind what you're finishing over. It appears unfinished, but it's not.

Here's what I did (and it worked):

1. For 3 or 4 days I brought the guitar into the bathroom when I showered! The steamy air helped a bit as the neck absorbed a small amount of moisture. Try not to bring the guitar in from the cold, too much moisture condenses on the metal parts (and probably inside the pots!), but if you bring it in from a modestly warm room and don't leave it in the steamy bathroom for hours it's a help and it doesn't hurt.

2. I glued a piece of 600 grit sandpaper to a sanding block and very carefully and lightly ran it along the edge of the fretboard. It very efficiently cut back the sprouted fret tangs and smoothed them.

Only a few careful passes took care of the sprouted frets and 600 grit will not do much to the edge of the fret board itself except polish it.



Regards,

Seth

[Johnnymic7]

Heyy thanks a bunch guys, i think ill try the shower trick. It makes sence as long as its kept in a short time, its just like a walkin humidifier all in all though, aside from the dryness, this lil peice of work sounds very nice. Squier has come along way in the past few years...

[737blues]

OMG. Later on you can join the debate about whether WD40 or Contact Cleaner is best for corroded electronics ...... don't you think, if it's a kit guitar you might be better off just finishing the fingerboard and neck?