Check out Earl Hooker’s vintage UNIVOX guitar fret micropolishing restoration for my friend Oliver Kostrinsky! Earl Hooker was an awe-inspiring slide guitarist and one of the architects of Chicago Blues. He is considered one of the most important Blues guitarist in history.The process of micropolishing involes leveling off a business card worth of thickness off the tops of the frets to get the deep string coil dents out and the corrosion, then I reshaped the frets to their original state and micropolished them. My father Dr. Phil Petillo invented a process of micropolishing that is used with his patented Petillo Precision Frets aka “triangle/pyramid frets” and I apply this process to every setup I do. The procedure involves the frets being polished from 400 grit sand paper all the way up to 10,000 grit lens paper (which polishes telescope lenses). The entire idea is to make the surface area so glass-like the metal string can resonate a clear true note with intonation clarity. I always use the example of the wine glass filled with liquid and the player rubs the rim…and the friction of that motion makes a note. You can imagine if the rim was rough, it would not be as reflective to carry the note. That is the principle with polishing the frets to so fine and flawless a gloss…the notes seem to hang in midair.
Wikipedia Bio:Earl Zebedee Hooker (January 15, 1930 – April 21, 1970) was a Chicago blues guitarist known for his slide guitar playing. Considered a “musician’s musician”, he performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker and fronted his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. He recorded several singles and albums as a bandleader and with other well-known artists. His “Blue Guitar”, a slide guitar instrumental single, was popular in the Chicago area and was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters as “You Shook Me!”
