When is it time for a fret level and dress?

[titan7]

One of the Charvel model 2# I got recently has some dents mainly on frets 2-7, strings G,B are the worst. It has no buzzing, or fretting out. Actually the rosewood board has some wear up around 14-20 on the high e side, prior owers must have pressed hard. I have heard two schools of thought, since they are removing fret material on the level and dress are you better off waiting until you get buzzing or fretting out before you do a fret level and dress? I mean, why speed up the removeal of metal and get to a re-fret sooner that you have to?

[titan7]

Okay here is a couple pics of the fret board. This is the one the guy told me the frets are good, would you consider these in "good" shape? Are these okay or am I looking at a re-fret??

[Dreamland_Rebel]

if it is ruining the intonation, or if its fretting out.

if its fretting out, most likely is being caused by a high fret infront of a smaller fret. this fix does not always mean a level and dress on the entire fretboard.

dents can cause intonation problems but thats in the eye of the beholder. i know a guy that has a 78 Les Paul that has hardly any frets left with nothing but dents all over them. but that guitar plays amazing and has little to no intonation problems.

if a certain chord has tuning issues and the rest of the guitar seems perfectly intune. then you might want to think about having it done.

or simply because you want new or different frets.

[rjohnstone]

I've seen worse.
Those could probably take a re crown without losing too much material.
But those are not what I would consider "good condition". Those are most definitely worn in my book, but still fixable.

[titan7]

It seems to play awesome, not buzzes, no fretting out. I think I will hold off until it really needs new frets then replace with Stainless Steel. It seems crazy, spend $250 bucks to re-fret a $250 guitar??? Oh well, they don't make any more new model series Charvels so I guess that life at some point.