Problems with fret buzz

[CKJ]

I cannot solve my fret buzz problem on my RR5 so i'm asking for advice here. I am a total noob to adjustable bridges, i've dealt with Floyd Rose's all my life and really wish the RR5FR's came in the Ivory w/ black pinstripes and gold hardware.

The guitar played good when I first got it, then I decided to put in a set of EMG pickups. So I tore it down as I waited for the pickups. It took almost a week to get the guitar back in playing status due to the whole new style EMG setup and me not liking it. So the strings were off of the guitar and the bridge was off for quite some time. Got everything back together and restrung it and the bridge posts were waaaaay to damn low. I guess vibration or movement from being transported from case to operating table to many times. So I look at some pics that I had of the guitar and adjusted the height by eye. Checked the string height on the 12th fret and its at .050". Awesome, so I go to play it and all I get is fret buzz like crazy.. well WTF happened. I check the neck for flatness and its a little flat.. so I make a minor truss rod adjustment to get it where I want it. Let it sit over night and check it again, still fret buzz. Raise the bridge up to .070" and still fret buzz... I am not playing a Jackson w/ .070" of string height.. if I want that much string height i'll f'n play an acoustic. So I add a little more bow into the guitar neck.. still buzzing like f'n crazy. No where near the amount of my RR1, KE3, RR24 or any other Jacksons that I have. So I finally say F it.. lets see how far I have to go in order for it not to have string buzz.. all the way up to 1/10th of an inch .100 Then I adjust the bridge screw down 1/2 turn and tune the strings and I get fretbuzz again. I adjusted the intonation, got the bridge on the right way (screws to front, nuts to back) and I am at a complete loss. This is a brand new guitar that is driving me crazy and is about to be thrown from my 2nd story window..

Is there anything that i'm missing? I have my flame suit on as well..so let it begin!

[Trem]

well first you have to determin where the buzz is coming from - there's a high fret somewhere or you have too much or too little bow and your fretting out that's pretty much the main cause of fret buzz if not the only cause, you just have to track it down.

[potatohead]

Start at square one:

First, tune it up to the tuning you want it to be at. Press the low E down at the first fret, and the 15th fret. Look at your gap at the 8th fret. It should be .008" - .010", maybe .012" at the most if you pick heavily. If you do not have feeler gauges to check this, out, the gap you want is about 1/2 - 2/3 the thickness of a credit card. Let is sit for couple hours and re-check the gap. Rinse and repeat until it is stable and doesn't move from the gap you want after sitting for a while.

Next, set the action. Start around 1.5 mm on the low E at the 12th fret, and about 1.2 on the high E. Re-tune and try it out. You may have to adjust from there slightly, if it's buzzing keep raising it a touch at a time until it stops, or if it's ok you can go down a bit. Adjust only a very little bit at a time. If it is buzzing on the upper (near bridge) frets the action is too low, if it is buzzing in the middle when fretting near the nut there is not enough neck relief, if it is buzzing near the nut on open strings the nut is cut too low.

Now, you do not have to get rid of buzz completely, if you cannot hear it through the amp it is not a big deal, an electric will not sound good acoustically if it is set up to play fast. Also unless the frets are perfect which is almost never the case (unless it has just been dressed or something) you may get some buzz here and there especially if you like low action.

Also, if you are only using 9's or something on it you may find going to 10's might help, the stiffer tension doesn't allow the strings to vibrate in as big of an ellipse.

[CKJ]

Thanks for the reply Trem! Its all along the frets on the high E A & D strings from 1-12 but gets substantially worse along 15-21 on every string.

I've adjusted the truss rod so there is a right decent bow into the neck and its still buzzing.. I just need people more skilled with the adjustable bridges to help me on this one and tell me how high their bridges are. Right now i'm starting from a scratch and I didn't bother to take any measurements before I pulled everything down. I didn't expect the posts to move that much.

This by far isn't the first time i've ever adjusted the truss rod to get rid of fret buzz but for some reason I just can't get this one spot on. I know it shouldn't be to much of a difference between the adj bridges and the FR's but I'm just having problems with this one.

[Trem]

what potatohead said, plus if you have too much bow it will fret out as well, since the middle of your neck is much lower than the higher frets.

[Grandturk]

Are all of your frets level? If you haven't gotten a level and crown, do so before even bothering with a setup.

[Newc]

The high E A and D? It's a 12-string?

The "high" strings are the G B and E, the unwound/plain strings, not the wound strings.

The neck has most likely sat for so long without string tension and the truss rod pulling backward that the neck is warped. You'll need a straightedge to make sure there's no humps in the neck.

[Riffmeister]

I jsut took my guitar for a setup, it's brand new and the action and setup on it were terrible. It came from Jackson like that, the fret edges were like running my hand over razorblades. So the guy sets it up, and now it plays awesome, UNTIL you hit certain frets. To make a long story short, I paid 70.00 for a setup, then after having these problems the guy tells me that I have some high frets and that it will cost me more to get that done. At first I didn't think anything of it, but he should have told me that before I paid for the setup.

He actually showed me with a straightedge where the high frets were, there were about 4 of them ,so I don't know if you are having the same issue or not.

Is this something that is covered under warranty, cause technically , you can't have a correct setup without the frets being level right?

[CKJ]

The high E A and D? It's a 12-string?

The "high" strings are the G B and E, the unwound/plain strings, not the wound strings.

The neck has most likely sat for so long without string tension and the truss rod pulling backward that the neck is warped. You'll need a straightedge to make sure there's no humps in the neck.

You just love to read into stuff to much don't you


Take no offense to what i'm about to say but this is a peek into my personal being and you'll understand why I say the things I do. I'll put it like this, I come from an uneducated guitar background which almost everything I have learned in my 15+ years of playing/picking has come to me from being self taught. So please excuse me for not being the most educated person by not having a single thing taught to me, not knowing a single chord, or not giving a shit what a scale (or any of the technical stuff )is. I just learn what I learn, when I learn it and why I learned it. It makes me unique if I may say from the rest of the players who keep that chip on their shoulder thinking that they're the next best thing since 3 ply toilet paper. I call things backwards like calling an output jack an input jack as you have already corrected me, and this recent one of calling the E string a high E. The way I see it, its high up on the neck when held correctly so thats my reasoning for calling it the High E. It may not be the way everybody else calls it but its comfortable to me.

But I am going to take it to a local guitar shop this upcomming weekend to have it looked at. I'm real eager to see the end result since it is a great playing/sounding guitar despite the fact of the enormous amount of fretbuzz. My RR24 I have setup to where I have only .040" of clearance between the 12th fret and the bottom of the High E string and have a very very very little amount of fretbuzz.. that guitar is truly the greatest thing to come from Japan. Plays like a dream..

But thanks for the tip on the neck. I attempted to check for straightness/uneven frets with my string gauge. But found it not to be quite fitting the bill.