Guitar Fret Sanding Leveler Beam Leveling Bar with Self-adhesive Sandpaper, Fingerboard Guard Protectors, Replacement Sanding Paper, Guitar Fingerboard Luthier Tools for Guitar Bass

You can't expect a lot for $19 these days, but this will work for basic fret levelling of around four guitars. I only wish the sanding block were longer, though this one will work if you pay attention. Just be cautious, and go slow, doing the following steps:*You must make sure the neck is perfectly flat (I use an old very nicely machined, long aluminum level to be sure the neck had no concave or convex dips or humps).*carefully cover the fretboard wood between the frets in tape*use a thick black permanent marker to blacken the tops of the frets*Using the provided sanding block, go slowly and lightly from end to end (nut towards the bridge or vice-versa), back and forth, slowly working your way from the low E to the high E string in equal amounts of pressure and passes. You will be done with this step when all of the marker is gone/mostly gone (sometimes, frets can have such dings or are so worn that they need to be replaced). Your frets will now look somewhat flat on top, which leads you to to...*Crowning - when using this file (which isn't that great of a file), go lightly or you will scratch grooves in the frets. Don't go overboard.*REQUIRED EXTRA STEPS if you expect to do a good job. If the crowning file isn't able to get all of the flat tops rounded off, you can use a cheap small triangular file (harbor freight has a whole set for $2.99) to remove any remaining edges on random frets. After that, I like to use1000 grit sandpaper (loosely held) to get the frets even smoother (most shallow scratches will disappear at this point), then finally 0000 steel wool to make everything super-slippery & bring back a mirror like shine.In the future at some point, I think I'll just make my own leveler with a roll of adhesive sandpaper and 22 x 3 inches of granite or corian, marble, etc. countertop scrap, and buy a FretGuru crowning file, but for now, this worked surprisingly well for a cheap fix.

The sanding block is probably the best part of the kit. Comes with 400, 600, 1000, and 1200 grit. The crowning file wasn’t anything amazing but it did work. After leveling and crowning i lightly went back over with 1200, buffed the frets to 2500, then polished, and the guitars play great. I made it through 2 necks without the tools wearing too much which is all i needed

The sanding block is simple and easy. It has 400 and 600 grit strips on the two narrow sides and 1000 and 1200 grit strips on the wider sides for finer sanding. It has small rubber bumpers on each end to prevent damage from bumping into things. I use it by quickly and lightly waving it up and down the length of the frets while slowly moving up and down the scale of the neck. Using a sharpie with it made it easy to tell which areas needed work and it was quick to use. I can see a potential need to replace this when the sandpaper gets used up, but they aren't too expensive and I don't do a ton of fretwork, so no big deal. You could change the paper with a heat gun and some light scraping to get the old paper off if needed.The file isn't amazing, but also not bad. It is straight and the teeth are mostly good on both sides. If you press straight down with it, it will file the fret down shorter, which is good for lowering problem frets which stick up way too high before attempting to sand the whole board.The file is wider than standard frets and has a little wiggle room when placed on a fret. To crown the frets, you must use a light to medium downward pressure and apply slight sideways pressure against the side of the fret you are filing while leaning the file about 25 degrees on the side you are filing. This will allow you to use only the rounded side part of the file against the side of the fret without shaving down the top, and make a proper crowning. It isn't perfect, but it works fine with patience. Just don't get too rough or too rushed, otherwise you'll slip and scar things up.Lastly, always go back over all the frets very gently with the file after you're done shaping them in order to smooth out as many of the rough filing marks as possible in order to make polishing easier in the later steps.I haven't used the fret guards but they seem fine. I tape necks off instead.The little bag is handy to keep the kit organized, along with my fret rocker and fret polishing abrasive pads.If you have old, well-used guitars, you need these or something like them, as well as an accurate straightedge and fret rocker.I leveled the frets on my old starter guitar with terrible frets and it now plays like a dream. It's much better than new. I'm going to give all my guitars a good once over soon after seeing how drastic and nice the improvement can be.

I was able to successfully level the frets on my Squier with this kit. Though I don't have the tools to determine whether the leveling beam and fret rocker are perfectly straight, they were at least close enough to get my cheapo Tele playing like butter.The leveling beam is short - somewhere around 6 inches - which is obviously far from ideal, but as long as you're careful and understand how/why the leveling process works, you should end up with a decent result. Wouldn't recommend using it for an important job like an expensive instrument where you want to keep as much fret material as possible, but it was good enough for me to try my hand at leveling on a $150 guitar without spending a lot on tools.The crowning file is surprisingly decent, but like the leveling beam I would go with something nicer (probably from Stew Mac) for an important job. Everything else seemed good enough that I won't need to upgrade them anytime soon. You might get duds, as with any cheap products, but mine were all good - no sharp edges or obvious defects. Didn't expect to get much use out of the string spreaders, but they were super handy in combination with the fretboard guards for touching up a couple frets after taking off the masking tape and restringing.Overall a very solid value for the budding budget-minded luthier.