Having your guitar “plek’d” refers to a fret dressing machine built by a German company called, surprisingly, Plek. We mention this because we’ve noticed some of the guitar manufacturers have been advertising the fact that they set up their guitars with Plek technology.

Gibson has recently added the Plek to their Gibson guitars in April 2008 (although the Custom Shop has had one since Dec. 2005), Framus was a recent addition but Martin and G&L have had theirs for a couple of years now, though I’m not sure which guitars receive the Plek and which don’t.

The Plek is a computer controlled machine that very precisely measures the fret and fretboard height under each string, taking 132 measure points (for a 22 fret guitar) to create an very accurate map of the fretboard. From there the robotic arm machines the frets to 1/100th of millimeter tolerance to create a perfectly setup fretboard.

I had my Gibson Les Paul setup on a Plek machine at Gary Brawer’s shop
in San Francisco back in 2004.  Without a doubt the Plek job took my LP to
another level.  The action is low and perfect and only after 4 years of
lots of playing and grinding did I need to take my guitar back in for
some *light* touch up work.

I highly recommend this setup for your axe.  Unfortunately there are only a few places in the US right now where you can take your guitar in to get this kind of setup.  Check out Plek’s website to find the nearest Plek machine.

And because a picture is worth a 1000 words…