Guitar Fingerboard Luthier Tool Set Including Guitar Fret Crowning Luthier File, Fret Leveling Beam Sanding Leveler Beam and Fingerboard Guard Protectors for Guitar Bass with Portable Storage Bag

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.

You can make it from wood, but this is likely more precise. Why do the photos show this thing with a guitar that has strings on? Here's a tip: Remove strings before fret leveling! :)

The package appears to be just as pictured and looks to be of good quality, though I haven't used it yet. However when I opened the plastic bag packaging, all of these little black plastic pieces fell out. Best I can guess, they were the little knobs on the ends of the strings that close the black velvet carrying bag. See photo. Tools look great, I'll follow up after using them on my bass guitar.Update: I have used them on the bass, which had very sharp fret ends on both sides of the maple fret board. The guitar was an inexpensive on-line order which is really nice and sounds great otherwise. I had to use the roughest surface of the sanding block to take down the fret ends, which worked perfectly without damaging the wood. I then used the edges of the flat file to dress down the end of each fret and completely round them off. It's like a brand new guitar and as it should have been when I got it.I didn't take before and after photos of the guitar, but I now feels great in my hand. Photos are after my repair.

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.

The bar is lightweight, I filled mine with bird-shot and rtv to give it some heft. works well but remember to not bear down, let the tool do the work. Guards are effective and useful, the fret files are okay for medium/large and large/large frets but get a better file for m/m or smaller (the crowning is too wide and deep for dreadnought, concert or parlor guitars) Good tools for the money, not pro, but useful.

The sanding board works very well for fret leveling and initial polishing. But I wouldn't trust the hand file even with shipyard tolerance work, much less a delicate guitar neck.

I've just started working on my own guitars recently. Wanted something that would help me sand my frets. Well this does the job it is not the best tool for the job. I will say that this was an expensive however you do get what you pay for. The sanding sheets do not last very long and chew up very easily. After trying a friend's tool that was of a higher quality this is one thing you shouldn't skemp on.

This product works very well. It has saved me a lot of money and I can level the frets on my own instruments.