Which guitarist doesn't know this scenario...

The instrument sounds excellent, looks precious and sits well in the hand, but somehow it is hard to play. A problem, that can be rectified.

Next to the tone it is the playability that is one of the most important characteristics of a musical instrument that determines its quality.With the plek process the most optimal string action possible for each instrument can be guaranteed, matching the individual style of the musician. An optimal playable guitar sounds better: the strings do not hit against the frets while playing and intonation problems, that occur because of a inadequately high string action, are eliminated.

The plek scan

We take a look at the guitar neck : It is important that the guitar is under string tension and in playing condition when measured. The computer ascertained a 3-D like graph of the fretboard surface, including the position and height of the strings. Thanks to the plek scan the relief of the neck made by the string tension is taken into account while calculating the process-parameters.

The virtual Fretboard

In the menu Virtual Fret Dress the operator can not only determine how much should be cut off from each fret but also can set the fretboard radius and amount of fall-off suited for the instrument or player. One can see the height of each fret, respectively how high they will be after processing and where on the fretboard it would buzz because of frets being too high or too low. The first step would be to adjust the neck relief with help of the truss rod.

Processing

When all the parameters for processing are set, the plek operator takes off the strings and starts the processing procedure. Depending on what parameters were entered, the frets will be cut as well as the nut and on acoustic guitars the saddle. With the new generation of plek Machines (plek pro) the frets are cut, on its predecessor (plek station) the frets are ground. The fundamental concept as well as the control software are essentially the same ; with the same quality achieved the duration of the fretwork process on the "station" takes merely longer than on the "pro" and nut work has to be done by hand.

Plek'd!

When frets, nut, and saddle have been processed, the instrument is strung up and tuned. The final scan checks to see if the result corresponds with the set specifications. If that is the case, then in closing, the frets are polished to a high gloss finish.

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Les Paul Standard plek'd

The plek process is explained and visualized in a pretty good video, recently published at the Gibson USA website (--> Les Paul 2008 Standard / Media / Video).