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, thanks for your help. I guess the thing to do is to get it looked at.