I have a steel string acoustic parlour guitar which was handmade in 1982 which I am extremely fond of – never been much of a player but I am improving gradually in later life. I used to play mostly open chords and the guitar always sounded fine, but now I am exploring further up the fingerboard.
For a couple of years now I have noticed that two notes sound really dead; these are the F and F# (frets 8 and 9) on the fifth string. At first I thought it was just the strings I was using and I have tried various types to try to isolate the problem – brass, phosphor bronze, with and without silk inner winding, nickel – but the problem persists.
There are no string rattles. I searched the Internet (as you do) and one suggestion was that the string might be damping on the fret above – but there is no sign of a rattle. I raised the saddle slightly and put on heavier strings to see if that would help – but no. There is very little sustain. But if I go up to the G on the tenth fret the sustain just comes back again.
Then I noticed that the F and F# on the fourth string (frets 3 and 4) have a similar dull sound, not as bad as the fifth string but noticeable. Now here is the really strange thing! My nylon string classical problem has the same problem! I also have a cheap travel guitar and a very cheap “supermarket” guitar neither of which exhibit this problem.
Any ideas?
This is almost certainly caused by strings hitting a higher fret. You won’t always hear a rattle or buzz and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the next fret up that is causing the issue, it could be fret 8 or 9 are slightly low, 10 slightly high … and depending on the warp of the neck it may even be further up than fret 10, maybe 11 or 12, it could be a few frets away.
It could be the truss rod need adjusting, the wood does move shape over time as it ages, or it could be the frets themselves that need filing slightly. Either way, if you look really closely along the frets while the sound is deadening you are almost certain to find one of them is hitting the string.
With that said, I’m not a guitar tech, I’m just going on my own experience. It might be a job for someone who knows what they are doing and with the right tools – it’s easy to make things worse otherwise.
Lee, before I took the guitar to be “looked at” I thought up a couple of tests that I could try at home myself, with interesting results.
I tried sliding a small (3mm) screwdriver between the fret board and various frets – just to make a “pretend” fret in various places. And then, as a separate test, I tried swapping over the fifth and sixth strings and then the fourth and fifth strings. And testing what sound I could hear.
Result: my F on the fourth string, eighth fret always sounds dead not matter what else I do. Conclusion: it’s a dead spot on the guitar. And as I mentioned in my first post – my classical shows the same “feature”.
I think my idea of using a small screwdriver to make a “pretend” fret could be useful for any future diagnostics on dead or buzzing frets.
Sounds strange. If it’s not the frets then only thing I can think of is a resonance / phasing issue causing some cancellation around that frequency. No idea how you’d go about fixing that though.
I spent a couple of hours looking on the Internet for clues for what has been causing this. From this and in line with what you said about phasing and cancellation, this seemed to be the most likely causes of the dead notes. Oh and I did pick up a tip that was a lot easier to try than the swapping the strings around that I was doing – just tune the string up and /or down by half a tone and see if the dead note moves relative to the fret – it does!
Thinking on what was being said about phasing and cancellation and the fact that guitar really shudders on a dead not (it feels like a car cash) I thought there could be some other things to try.
I tried things that didn’t work, eg adding weight to headstock with a C clamp or holding the headstock against a wall .But the thing that does work is to stick a 2oz kitchen weight to the front of soundboard with BluTack!! It took a couple of experiments to find a good spot, but the difference is distinct and immediate.
Without spending hours with different weights in lots of different places I am counting this a a fix.
Interesting. Can’t imagine it’s a common problem so pretty amazing that you have it happen on two guitars. Tuning down causing the dead spot to move pretty much confirms it must be a cancellation thing. Can honestly say I have no idea how you’d fix that but adding some well placed weights seems feasible, although I guess it will dampen some of the overall sustain. Next time I see my luthier friend I’ll ask him what he thinks – I’m now curious 🙂
Lee, thanks for your help. I guess the thing to do is to get it looked at.