kurt28

I bought a used fender guitar (acoustic/electric) and it has some buzzing going on when I play it which drives me nuts. There seems to be certain spots on the fret board where I get a lot of buzzing, and usually on the A string.

I took it to a guitar shop where they also repair guitars and had them look at it. The guy said it had a slight bow in the neck so he tightened the truss rod just a bit to straighten the neck. But, it didn't fix the problem.

I got to thinking - wouldn't that make the buzzing even worse if you tighten the rod because that would straighten the neck bringing the strings even closer to the fretboard. If there's buzzing going on then it must be that the sting that's buzzing is hitting on the next fret up from where you are fretting right? I was thinking that I should loosen the neck a bit to get the strings to come out a hair. Wouldn't that fix the buzzing problem?

Thanks

Insane Guest

You could try adjusting your intonation, had a Telecaster with major fret buzz around the third fret, started messing around with the intonation and it made playing a whole lot smoother, replacing the nut might help too.

kurt28

What do you mean by "intonation"? I've heard that term before, but I'm not sure what it means.

P A N

it basically means your neck is a bit warped. it doesn't mean it's permanent necessarily though. chances are it can be fixed, but if you don't know what you are doing it's not something you really want to watch a couple youtube videos on and have at'er. it's generally a combination of adjusting your truss rod (the piece of cylindrical steel running down the length of the neck) and your bridge nut. depending on whether or not your bridge nut is all spring-loaded and screw-fitted, it may be a matter of actually filing it down, which is kind of an art. having your intonation set up properly shouldn't cost you much really. i wouldn't stop at my post though. i'm no expert on the matter by any means.

EDIT: and as far as the definition of intonation, it's basically a matter of resonance. if things are all perfectly aligned and whatnot your instrument will resonate properly and vice verse. buzzing is generally a sign that your neck is slightly bowed backward and when you vibrate the string they slap up and down on a fret at a pretty high rate. hope that helps.

edit 2: pardon my idiocy. i only read the last post and the title.

Burning Down

Well I'm guess that since you had the truss rod adjusted, it could be one or two frets that need to be filed down a little bit. My friend had the buzzing problem with her classical guitar - she had the truss rod adjusted and there was no warping, but the guy at the shop said that there was a fret that was a little higher than the rest. He filed it to be even with the other frets and she hasn't had a problem since then.

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IcarusDown

You probably have a bent neck or too low string action.
Youtube some tutorials how to fix this, it's really easy.

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duga

Same thing happened to me. I'll be willing to bet this is the problem.

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Arya Stark

I had the same issue and the neck had to be adjusted. See if that's the problem.

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Plankton

If the truss rod adjustment doesn't work, take a look at all the frets and see if one of them has popped out. If it has, I found an easy solution (just by chance) while I was perusing a guitar forum.

At any rate, hope you get it worked out.

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