Skip to content
Dead frets... or so...
 
Notifications
Clear all

Dead frets... or something.

2 Posts
2 Users
0 Likes
1,786 Views
(@dzamija)
New Member
Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 1
Topic starter  

Hope somebody can help me out. I play a cheap LTD guitar, cost me about $250, plus the Seymour Duncan pickup that I put in it which was another $70. It's been serving me well for a good seven years already. I'm left handed and I live in Serbia so it is really hard to find a good guitar without really breaking the bank, so I am pretty much stuck with it until further notice.

The guitar is in Drop C tuning and I've been using a 0.11-0.50 string gauge until recently. I decided to experiment with a 0.12-0.52 gauge, and that's when problems started appearing.

First off, my nut broke off when I removed the old strings. I glued it back on but I'm pretty clumsy so I might not have glued it back on exactly the way it was, but oh well. The new strings kept it in place well enough. After putting on the strings, though, I noticed that a few of the frets were acting strange. Losing their pitch and sustain, buzzing, sounds all messed up.

Not wanting my neck to warp or anything like that, I took the strings off about two weeks later (probably should've done it right away but eh, I'm careless like that) and replaced it with a .011 gauge again. To my dismay, this did not fix the problem and the problem frets were still there, and there even seemed to be more of them.

What bugs me is that it seems that it's only happening on the sixth and fifth string. The other strings seem to sound just fine on all the frets. I have no idea what could be causing this problem. The nut breaking off? The neck warping? Truss rod needs adjustment? I don't know. I was going to take it to a tech next week or something, but since I sprained my knee rather badly a few days ago I can't really move so that's going to have to wait. So I was wondering if someone around here maybe has some advice for me, or has had some experience with a problem like this. I uploaded a recording of me playing all the frets on all the strings (single notes, from the 1st fret to the 24th), and power chords up to the 12th fret on the top three strings. These might give you a better idea of what's going on.

As I said, it's the 6th and 5th strings that are problematic. The rest sound fine to me. The ones on the 5th string sound wobbly and out of tune, and a few on the 6th string (12th fret and above) are basically dead. Thank you in advance for any help that you can provide me.

It has a fixed bridge, the guitar itself looks like this:

Peace!

You can find the recordings here: https://www.sendspace.com/file/8ykqew


   
Quote
(@factorx)
Eminent Member
Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 20
 

You can check bow in neck by pressing a string on first fret and last fret at the same time and see how the spacing is between string and all the frets

If each string sounds good open then it's not your nut because when you press a fret the string only has vibration from that fret to bridge leave the nut out of the equation.

Drop C leaves the strings very loose anyways and this allows for more movement that can cause strings to touch other frets between the one your pressing and the last

Check to make sure your action isn't set to low.

Check that a fret hasn't lifted out of the fret board

Check that a fret doesn't have a deep groove worn in to it from aggressive string stretching and hammer on pulloffs. If a fret gets to worn the string goes lower then it use to and will be closer to other frets after the worn one

Best of luck to you


   
ReplyQuote