Heating frets for removal....A HOT tip !

[thefishinmusician]

I got this tip from Leonard Shapiro , a local repair master...Been using it for years..Using a regular Craftsman or Weller type soldering gun , you cut the tip off , and bend legs on to each of the elements , file a groove on to each leg...Place it on the fret..The fret itself makes the connection to the two elements...Wet the area around the fret...Apply the gun , and pull the trigger...In about 5 seconds , you will get a puff of steam...Fret is hot , and ready to pull , or go out sideways...May not be good to use near pickups , because of some electrical problem...Just use caution and smarts on maple fingerboards...Too long , and I bet you could scorch the finish...But I haven't in at least 50 maple necks I've re-fretted...

[Andrew]

I keep meaning to pick one of these up.

[Russell Vance]

Hi Andrew,

"I have to wonder how far from a pickup youd have to be to eliminate this risk".

I don't know, but the ease with which things (especially pickup poles) can be magnetised or de-magnetised is accepted as high.   I suspect that Mr Fralin knows the answer regarding these guns - but, pertinent to the problem is that it may not be a complete process and that some degradation may occur - changing the response and output of the PUP. 

Give that matters of magnetism are accompanied by the 4th root (from memory) distance versus power  formula (double the distance and the power get 16 times less - I'm going back 30 years here - but it's something like that) I suggest that you would have to be right next to the PUP to do anything significant.

I'm not a fan of using steam near lacquer or poly as it may lift the lacquer from the substrate if the water wicks under the finish and is subsequently boiled (steamed).

Rusty.

[Ned Knepp]

I have a cheap soldering gun that I purchased just for this. I didn't cut the tip, I just made a slot so it's easier to slide back and forth on the fret. I think it works just fine this way AND I can still use it to solder the occassional grounding lug.  I can't say if it effect pickups because I'd probably have to actually work on an Electric guitar to find out.  

In my world stories about the dangers of Magnetism are usually in conjunction with something computer oriented. I once came across a "user" in an office that had 3 monitors go "wonky" in about as many weeks. I was the third tech to go check things out and I just happened to notice that there was a cylinder of steel about 4 inches across and 6 inches long with a rough handle through the center, stuck to the side of the steel desk. When I asked about it, the "user" picked it off of the cabinet and started rolling it around on his desk to pickup staples that he's pulled from paperwork.... directly in front and under his CRT based monitor. For those of you who don't know, CRT technology uses an "electron gun" emitter to scan lines on the insider of the screen and the beam is controlled by, you guessed it, magnetic fields.  Actually, people used magnets around CRT devices all the time but the field they develop are small and they usually didn't get close enough to effect the control fields. In the case of this monitor it was an unusually powerful magnet being moved quickly that did the trick over a relatively long distance ( a foot or so at it's closest.)

 I confiscated the magnet and stuck it to the side of one of my departments metal shelving units where it almost immediately became our favorite tool for insuring that no hospital patient information ever left the facility on an old/retired disk drive. 

Almost everyone "knows" that magnets are a no-no around data disks. This idea carried over to Hard disk drives and a lot of people worry about any magnets near their computer system with out realizing that electrical current flowing in a wire produce a magnetic field and if one of them happens to take apart an old disk drive they will be surprised to see that that the read/write head mechanism contains some pretty powerful magnets... just an inch or so, at most, from the disk surfaces.  

I guess the whole point to all of this is that it actually takes a pretty powerful magnetic field to have much effect on anything more than an inch or two away. The monitor was effect because of the delicate nature of the control fields in the tube AND the "over the top" power/size of the magnet the User was waving around over his desk. At exactly the same time he was wrecking his monitor with a magnet, his disk drive was happily ticking away containing some fairly strong magnets parked right next to his disks surfaces with no problems.

I don't know much about pickups but I'm having a hard time believing that a solder gun can demagnetize them so easily so can someone, please,  take a cheap soldering gun to their prize Strat and let us know just how close they had to get to trash their pickups? 

[RETROROD]

Thanks Ned, for the info on wiping hard drives....I always thought that the ol' sledge-hammer(on concrete) did a pretty good job of rendering them useless..?!?

I think that Lindy's warnings come from too many complaints on the 'degradation' of his pickups for no apparent reason other than " well-meaning amateurs using the tools at hand" and soldering them in (as upgrades) with a soldering gun...I would have to agree that a soldering 'gun' is "overkill" when performing routine electric guitar repairs/mods....

 

I have heard of this problem from others also. I am sure that he is trying to protect what is left of his "profit margin"....as well as his reputation for making some my-T-fine pickups.

 

[Ned Knepp]

I didn't think about using my soldering gun on the actual pickup, RRod. I have a station that I use for things like that.

I can see where my cheap gun's field  might effect a pickup if I used it on the pickup because heating magnets can weaken them too.  I honestly don't know much about magnetic pickup or how powerful their magnets are. Is this really such an issue if you're not heating the pickup as would be the case when pulling frets?  

[RETROROD]

Hey Ned, I was not pointing fingers, believe me.

I did put an email in to Lindy, too possibly get some more 'clarity'.

His Reply....

"You are probably fine working on frets. Just know that some of these gun do work with magnetic fields and you want to keep that big coil in the gun as far as you can from the pickups. Lindy  "

 

Nothing 'absolute' OR 'scientific'....just a 'general beware'.

 

Rod

[nathan clark]

You can shield the pickups with an emf shield such as mu-metal during a refret.