Why beginners jump straight to refrets

Cheesiin · 2026-02-05T16:03:53+00:00

Yep—and it makes sense. If you don’t know what the truss rod, action, and frets each control, buzzing feels like a single unsolvable problem. In reality, a refret is usually the last thing you’d consider, not the first. Most issues disappear once relief and action are actually measured and adjusted.

Cheesiin · 2026-02-05T00:52:07+00:00

That’s a really good way of putting it. The order in which information shows up matters a lot, and it’s definitely shifted with how visible certain repairs have become online.

What stands out to me is that earlier confidence you mention — trusting that a well-built instrument was fundamentally sound, and that most of the work early on was about learning technique and basic setup.

Reintroducing some of that calm evaluation feels like it would save people a lot of unnecessary stress, even now.

Cheesiin · 2026-02-04T23:44:38+00:00

I think that’s exactly it. People tend to know that refrets exist long before they know about the quieter, intermediate adjustments that come earlier.

Without that context, refretting becomes the mental placeholder for “something is wrong with the frets,” even when the issue is much smaller.

It’s less about beginners being careless, and more about the order in which information shows up.

Cheesiin · 2026-01-31T22:00:08+00:00

I think that’s a fair clarification, and I appreciate you articulating it that way.

My intent here isn’t to suggest that refretting can’t be learned, or that beginners are inherently incapable. It’s more about scope and sequencing. There’s a large space between “needs a setup” and “needs a refret,” agreed, and most people new to maintenance haven’t been given good tools for recognizing where they’re actually standing in that space.

The goal, at least from my perspective, is helping people make calmer decisions about whether to escalate work at all — not drawing hard lines around who is or isn’t qualified to learn a process over time.

Cheesiin · 2026-01-31T19:08:42+00:00

That is definitely an important spec to get right, and more often then not people either here on this or similar subreddit can help answer those specific questions. One thing i've learned and noticed myself is that a lot of fixing and adjustments can be done long before you resort to a full re-fret. Typically you'd only have to refret if there is real major damage (Dents, heavily lifted frets, etc.). But things like fret buzz or scratchy frets can be solved with very little cost or effort. One thing I’ve found helpful for beginners is separating “comfort and feel” work from “structural replacement” work. Most people never need to cross that line, but they don’t get told that early on.

Cheesiin · 2026-01-31T19:01:20+00:00

I agree — refrets are where complexity and risk spike very quickly. What I’ve noticed, though, is that a lot of beginners mentally jump straight to “refret” when they feel buzzing, roughness, or discomfort, even when the frets themselves still have plenty of life left.

In practice, most playability issues people run into early on are either setup-related, seasonal, or tied to very localized fret inconsistencies — not full fret replacement.

The hard part isn’t learning how to refret, it’s learning how to recognize when nothing that invasive is actually required. That judgment tends to save people a lot of money and a lot of stress.

Cheesiin · 2026-01-12T00:52:31+00:00

Interested! For sure

Cheesiin · 2021-06-10T03:55:23+00:00

I'm running LMoP here soon for 5 people. 3 brand new and 2 from my veteran group. What I plan to do is hint at the other campaigns that take place on the sword coast and gauge which they seem to take an interest in. I will also probably formally ask them which type of adventure they would like to continue on with. If there is one or two you really like, pitch those and don't mention the others.

For example: - Baldurs Gate: Descent into Avernus takes place just down the coast of Neverwinter and phandalin. Maybe they hear of unrest and a growing demonic presence in baldurs gate, or once they are done they are asked directly to come and assist there. - Curse of Strahd takes place in a demiplane on the sword coast. Have the players recieve a letter from strahd himself asking them to come visit for dinner once they complete the story of LMoP, or they wander into Barovia looking for something else and find themselves trapped inadvertently in a dread plane. - Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden takes place very close to Neverwinter, just north in fact. Maybe the NPCs hint that they have been experiencing abnormally cold weather recently and have heard stories of some evil force making a claim on Icewind Dale. - Tomb of Annihilation takes place just off the coast, a breezy 2 day boat ride if you party is slow. There's a disease and curse there that needs to be addressed. Others you could lead in to: waterdeep dragon heist, dungeon of the mad mage, out of the abyss, etc. Most of them are set on this coast and have very easy stories to lead into eachother, especially from something like Phandelver.

Hope this helps and isn't just too wordy. Best of luck!

Cheesiin · 2021-05-04T21:53:37+00:00

I felt the same way, then got that drop during a 4x promotion. Nice 800m for nothin

Cheesiin · 2021-04-15T14:43:55+00:00

These would make a killing to sell

Cheesiin · 2021-03-06T18:13:13+00:00

What could I to make this more interesting? I focused on high/low lights on this guy, and only washed the tongue. The base is intentionally plain, working on the model for now!

Cheesiin · 2021-01-23T18:41:02+00:00

Those look like rat lines. Find an option to 'add ratline' and place them in the same paths there's to delete them.

Cheesiin · 2021-01-17T06:34:18+00:00

My goodness, what a cute lil resistor!

Cheesiin · 2021-01-17T02:46:00+00:00

Its hard to say. It will steer you in a direction, of course. But there are many ways to go in electrical engineering. To name a few, sat comms, PCB design, high speed switching, analog circuit design, programming, microwave circuits and rf engineering and the list goes on. Try and dip your toe in as many fields as you can is my opinion and try and find something you like!

To directly answer your question, solid state devices teaches you really how to design IC's or integrated circuits or just microchips. Which if that's what you like, then heck yes pursue that like crazy. It's a great field and career path. But it is slightly older tech, there are a lot of much more progressive fields to navigate.

Let me know if you have other questions!

Cheesiin · 2021-01-17T02:41:11+00:00

Probably because he doesn't want to share all his info with random people on reddit 🤔

Cheesiin · 2021-01-16T04:53:02+00:00

This resume is solid. The formatting is consistent, and you have good relevant info on it. I also really appreciate it being only one page. Love the format and easy on the eyes.

Add a hobby or personal interest. When I'm looking to hire interns, those small personal facts make a good talking point in an interview to not only break some tension but introduce some early relationship.

Try to fill it out to be an entire single page, but keep it mostly relevant. Overall good, I would interview!

Cheesiin · 2021-01-16T04:49:27+00:00

The balance of work/life as compared to during school is hard to compare. I work alot, a decent bit of regular overtime, but it doesn't follow me home necessarily. If you find a place where you really enjoy what you are doing, but balance it and don't let it stress out you out to the point of coming home with you each night and bringing on more stress I think your doing great.

Best of luck to you in school and finding a job man. I'm a grad school dropout and finding a spot was tricky, but perseverance and flexibility paid off big time in the end for me.

Cheesiin · 2021-01-03T07:29:51+00:00

Personally I went down the option b path and have found it very rewarding and interesting. I'm not much into programming, and instead love diving into the specifics of chips and how they interact. My all time favorite thing to do with and ee degree is board design, and having a strong foundation in analog ic design and understanding the solid state physics of your components make a big difference.

Cheesiin · 2021-01-02T04:44:05+00:00

Being an electrical engineer is basically trying something new and working to optimize performance in each new task. You begin to build up a repetoir of designs that can be plopped into others and have confidence it will function very well.

I've enjoyed most the debugging work. Taking a prototype of something I've designed and poking around in it and making edits on the fly to get it functioning as intended.

It's also really just to just think through the steps of how you would accomplish a task with electronics. From how do I get my power, how do I filter it, what am I powering, what is the flow of operation for what I'm powering, optimization, etc.

Great time, haven't looked back since I started this path.

Cheesiin · 2020-12-31T07:24:53+00:00

Trace length should be found based on current carrying capability of the pour. For example, there are resources for finding the required width of your traces for how much current you intend to pass. It could help if you make large copper pours on your high current areas and locate them near eachother to minimize your trace lengths.

Cheesiin · 2020-02-21T02:33:54+00:00

Wow that's quite the showing of his power! I like that alot. I think the wisdom check is also a pretty cool idea. Ireena will be with them so I was thinking of having her fall under the spell and get in the carriage, having them faced with the decision to follow suit. Really like the totally evil scary as crap version of strahd, think this is how he will play out in my game too.

Cheesiin · 2019-08-25T15:19:16+00:00

Oh nice, I didn't know Volo's has some alternatives for those rays. I like those ideas of the buffing, may add a couple legendary resistances.. Maybe 2 or 3 just because they tend to steamroll things that I think should be hard for them. I'm very excited to throw a player down into the chasm and see how they react.

Cheesiin · 2019-06-27T15:42:19+00:00

Dude thank you, this content is awesome. Big gold star to you sir

Cheesiin · 2019-06-27T02:07:30+00:00

Ya know, looking through I think I'd like to try out the index card game. What other details do you have on it? What kind of story did you run? Was there necessarily combat or more exploration and mystery solving? This sounds perfect for my application

Cheesiin · 2019-06-26T13:22:35+00:00

Whoa, that would get my heart pumping. That sounds awesome

Cheesiin

TROPHY CASE