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Joe Glazer talks about PLEK TQR:Let’s talk about the Plek machine. Can you describe what it does? The Plek is a computerized tool that scans an instrument strung to pitch, generating graphic views of the fret plane, fret heights, fret shape and placement, fingerboard relief radius, humps and bumps -- basically everything you always wanted to see well but couldn’t. Within an extremely accurate map of the neck on the computer monitor, the operator creates a virtual fret dress incorporating any individual real world preferences, then the strings are moved aside and the Plek does that dress, applying complex relief calculations to the particular action and string gauges on that guitar, accurate to a resolution of .00005 in. TQR:And is it being accepted well by your customers? People like the work that it does a lot. They were pretty afraid of the machine because the process costs more, and it does cost a little more, but not a lot. People do talk about their guitars sounding better, which surprised me. I suppose that’s because it puts a consistent, equal center on the frets and it allows maximum clean attack everywhere, given their action. And you hear those two things, as well as feel them. People say fret dressing is an art, right? But to me, the Plek machine is like a guitar tuner. Today, I can’t imagine living without a guitar tuner, and now I can’t imagine not being able to see what’s really going on with the neck. It’s not like sighting down the neck from either end and trying to see past the optical illusions to where the high spots are, or playing it and figuring out where the high and low spots are and what problems are due to string quality. It’s like discovering a major tool family, just like with calipers when I first began using them. Even though manual fret dressing is an art, I can do a virtual fret dress with tthe Plek and account for every possible consideration -- whether or not I want any particular compound radius further up the neck because a player bends and likes low action, or if I want lower frets in the first position to keep a hard grip in tune while leaving higher frets up the neck for vibrato... All of those things that I have always taken into account when I hand dress frets are still done, but once the parameters are programmed into the Plek, I’m turning the actual work over to the most accurate and consistent employee in the shop, or the US, for that matter. It’s not like I plan to do my best fret dress and execute it pretty well, because life is tricky. WIth this tool, it is executed perfectly. That’s the result of technology gone right, to say nothing about the benefit of doing the hyper-accurate analysis scans witht the neck at full string tension. It has powerful viewing capability. You can look at a graph or topo map of anything. It’s like X-ray to a broken bone. Goodbye to the witch doctor. A difference of .003 of an inch is a night and day difference in playability, but that’s a typical tolerance. Now we hold a tenth of that or even less and do it in an ideal relief. That’s important, too. The master-level guesswork is gone. The neck jig was a great idea, but you can’t hold a neck in place with the kind of tolerance that can make or break a great fret job, nor fight the bizarre contours that occur when string tension is released. The Plek measures each fret relative to the fingerboard, then when the strings are pushed aside, it levels and shapes them perfectly, regardless of the effect of the tension release.... ToneQuest.com Joe Glazer, Glazer Instruments |
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