The Plek Trek: can the best be made better? - Article extract by Proteus on The Gretsch Pages, May 2010

...What I HADN'T expected was how the responsiveness and playability of the entire guitar is enhanced. I think most guitars – particularly those played by those of us who go for the lowest action we can reasonably get – have areas of the fretboard where we know to go easy, because certain notes will choke if we play too hard.

I suspect we all adapt subconsciously to each guitar's unique pattern of such idiosyncrasies, eventually without even knowing we're doing it. We know how far we can bend here and there, which voicings to avoid, where we have to go easy.

When all those anomalies are just gone, the entire fretboard opens up. The guitar rings like a piano at every fret, every note. You don't have to steer around potholes or avoid the shallows. Nothing chokes anywhere, so notes you'd have avoided (like above the 14th fret on the lower strings) are now useful.

You find the guitar more responsive. It doesn't choke. Bend away. Pick more dynamically. The guitar actually becomes completely itself, like it can now express its full potential....

In other words, you lose all setup or action-related excuses: the guitar no longer inhibits you in any way.

It must be something like the pampered treatment women get at day spas.

Is it worth the money? For a guitar you want to play as well as it possibly can, in a heartbeat. Won't matter what you PAID for the guitar either. If you like the guitar enough to want it to be "all it can be," a fine Plek job seems a bargain. .

The Gear Page forum (April 24th 2005) - Plek Job by Philtone

What is a Plek? Think of it as a super microscope measuring device that completely maps out the frets, finger board, neck twist, etc. and provides the luthier with computerized views of how to make corrections such that a balance can be obtained relative to playability, string vibration, etc. This is my interpretation of this as I watched my #1 being worked by the machine....

I cannot express how picky I am on my setups. I like the lowest action possible, yet I stretch the you-know-what out of my strings (these two priorities are always at odds with each other) I demand maximum sustain and tone and do not like compromise. I just got my Plek job (I will refer to this as a "PJ" lol) yesterday and had a 4-hour gig last night.

.... Was my PJ worth the money? Are you kidding me? This was the best investment I have ever made in an instrument.

Fretbase.com's News Section (August 15th, 2008) - The Plek Machine: Highly Recommended

"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."

ESP Guitars Message Board (December 22nd, 2002) – "THE ESP LTD EC-1000 DELUXE"

"The faultless evaluation also refers to the playability of the EC-1000. The extra jumbo frets are well dressed and highly polished. Together with the great adjusted bridge and a fine notched nut, it had a string height of 1.2mm (3/64") with no fret buzz at all!" (Translation of a Test in a German Guitar Magazine, with translators comment)
"P.S.: I found out, that the EC was probably sent to a plek-center, before being sent to the magazine. So that's why the setup was so good in the test. I heard that many distributors do that to get a good test result in playability and so they sell more. I heard now from up to 10 people that the setup of the EC isn't perfect as mentioned in the test." (translators comment)

Harmony Central (July 31st, 2001) – "New Fret Dressing Technology at Summer NAMM"

"The international area at Summer NAMM doesn't often draw a lot of attention, but at this year's Nashville NAMM show, a curious piece of machinery called the "plek" caught our attention."
"This oddity was courtesy of a German company that also goes by the name plek, and it was performing a commonly needed task of fret dressing. Aiming to bring high precision to what is otherwise a bit of an art, the plek is a computer controlled machine that carefully measures the fret and fretboard height underneath each string (it actually pushes the string aside slightly so they don't need to be removed, maintaining the tension on the neck)."

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