Hi detroitace,
concerning your question about the possibility of refretting a neck with fret-edge-binding I've got an interesting statement of a German luthier (one of the best) to this point.
As it was of course in German I translated for the forum members:
Hello Roger,
Thanks for your email.
The fretting ? la Gibson (fret-edge-binding) means that first of all the fretboard will be completely fretted, then after that it is easy to grind the width of the fret board and the fret edges. Then the binding will be fastened there and glued. The binding jutting out on to the level of the frets will be simply sharpened with the blade of a knife.
Most of the other manufacturers use to glue at first the fretboard, then mould it flush with the wood of the neck and after that they mould them together for the binding which will be glued in the next step. In this case the frets are overlapping the binding ? the ?playing zone? will be a little bit wider and string slipping beneath the frets will be avoided. You can see it sometimes on very old and shrinked fretboards. Therefore the base of the frets (which keeps the frets into the slots) must be cutted oder grinded in the area of the binding.
This method has the advantage that you can true off the glued fretboard properly before the frets will be mounted.
That is not possible with the Gibson-method and that is the reason for the mostly mediocre results of the Original Gibson-LP ? fretboards.
Concerning the refretting of a neck it doesn?t matter what kind of binding (fret-edge or not) has been used ex works. Trueing off the fretboard a grinding of the rests of binding on the level of the fretboard must unavoidable happen! After that the refretting of the neck will be carried through in accordance with method 2.
It is a big nonsense to try it in a different way because you will not get the same satisfying results. You should not try to rip off the binding for it will not survive that torture, exception: you want to give a new lacquer to your neck, but that will work with the Gibson nitro-lacquered necks only, not with the PU-lacquered ones. But you shouldn?t consider this for the sake of the beloved instruments. I would refuse to do so!
The other opportunity adjusting the frets exactly on to the binding tips has also to be ruled out because in this case you cannot true off the fretboard exactly and so you are not able to get an improvement of the playability at all. As every neck is more or less warped over the years trueing it off should normally equalize that on this occasion.
Regards
Andr?
Finally we've got an answer on our questions - long but interesting out of the sight of an expert! Fret-edge-binding will disappear !
Roger