Hey there fellow guitarists. My name is Josh, I'm a new member here at GuitarNoise. I've been playing guitar for about 8 years now. Enough about me, onto the question. I just bought a guitar (literally about 2 hours ago) from a music store called JC Music, they were having a 25%-75% off all store merchandise sale, so I picked myself up a nice little guitar and Ibanez practice amp. The guitar I chose is an ESP EC-50, pretty sexy guitar if you ask me. There's a certain problem I noticed while playing it though. When I hold down the 1st fret on the 5th string, it "twangs" if I may. Upon further inspection, I noticed that when the 1st fret is pressed down, the string slightly lays upon the 2nd fret causing this "twanging" sound. Any way I can fix this without bringing it to a shop or messing up my guitar?
P.S. I DID try it out at the store, but I didn't play any riffs that required that specific fret. (Sorry for all the babbling)
It sounds like that second fret wasn't set properly or that it needs to be filed down to the same height as the others. Take a ruler and measure the frets and I wouldn't be surprised to find that that particular fret is ever so slightly higher than the others, which isn't an uncommon thing. You should be able to take it back to the store where you bought it and have them fix it (possibly for free). I wouldn't do it myself, because you really need to be precise. I would take it to someone.
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"Don't wanna ride no shootin' star. Just wanna play on the rhythm guitar." Emmylou Harris, "Rhythm Guitar" from "The Ballad of Sally Rose"
do you hear this with the guitar amped or not?
Josh
You are probably getting a little fret buzz. There are several things that could cause this. First, and probably the most common reason is simply the action is too low for this string. If each string has an individual saddle, try raising the saddle for this string slightly. If it has a bridge that raises all the strings, raise it very slightly on the bass side only.
It is also possible the neck relief is too straight. This is common too, especially on guitars set up to play Metal style. Guitarists of this style will tighten the truss rod so that the neck is very straight, also lowering the action super low, makes for very easy fretting and playing super fast. But, if you go too far and overtighten the truss rod it forces the headstock down, your neck is basically shaped like a frown. :(
When the headstock is forced down like this, often you will get fret buzz in the early frets 1-5. If this is the problem, try turning the truss rod counter-clockwise maybe 1/8 turn at a time. The headstock will come up and you will get clearance in the early frets. Go in small increments, and mark the truss rod when you begin in case you want to return to the original position.
Third, you could have a raised fret, but this is pretty uncommon. But it is easy to check, just put a short straight-edge that will cover 3 frets only. If the straight edge rocks, then a fret is either too low, or one is too high.
This can be corrected, but I would take it back to the shop and have them correct it since it is a new instrument.
A last possibility (but it happens) is that the string got bumped at this fret, the fret indenting the string upward ^. This will cause the string to come down too low after the fret, touching the next higher fret. You can usually see this by just looking. Simply replace the string if this happens.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
do you hear this with the guitar amped or not?
Both actually.
It probably just needs a minor adjustment in the action or the truss rod, but if you're new to this I'd take it into a shop for a setup. The tech will adjust everything to fix your problem, plus any others you didn't know you had. Probably about $40 and will make your guitar much better. Try the shop where you bought it first - they might do it for free or cheap.
