Peestie said:
Thanks for the replies. Sorry, I can't get any pictures of it. I'm staying away from home at university at the minute and don't have a camera. Even my phone is too old have a camera (hell, it can only hold 10 text messages lol).
Probably should have mention before... The guitar is new a couple of weeks ago and it's had the buzz the whole time. It has a really nice warm tone that I liked when I was playing it in the shop and was the right guitar for me in every way without jumping up from £500 to £1,000 (which I couldn't afford). Depending how the string is plucked it doesn't always buzz and it never did while I was playing it in the shop before I bought it. It was only after an hour of playing it at home that I first noticed it.
Never bought an acoustic before so it didn't occur to me to check for buzz before hand. Not something I've come across. I'm only getting round to asking about it now because I wanted to try putting new strings on it first, so I didn't seem to be asking a really stupid question. Only got round to putting new strings on it now because I'm a poor student and sometimes food is more important than strings!
Thanks for the replies. Should I maybe take it down to the guitar shop and see what they say? It's bound to be common enough that they can show me stuff in person...
Thanks for the replies. With that new info would you still suspect it needs more humidity? It's certainly a possibility.
Well I wouldn't do that now that you have given me the important info lol.
This is what to do and it won't be a risk if you are carefull.
Make a truss rod adjusment (Its not rocket science) you can do it yourself.
Find out where the Truss rod end is, it is eithor inside the acoustic where the neck meets the body or at the end of the neck by the nut with a little cover on it.
Uncover it and find an allen Key that fits perfectly, then turn it clockwise about one quarter of a revolution and then try playing your guitar and see if the buzz is gone.
A truss rod goes through the neck of any guitar and keeps tension on it to help line it up and to prevent it from twisting.
When you tighten your truss rod you will add tension to the neck and this will raise your action a tad which will likely remove the buzz.
The way you are describing the buzz it sounds to me like you are getting what is referred to as "fretting out". When you play a guitar you fret a note and the string that is fretted say at the fifth fret should not touch any frets about the fifth fret in this example.
If your action gets to low your string will touch frets about where you are fretting.
Tightening your truss rod will raise the neck up and fix this problem. Your guitar will go out of tune after the adjustment because it will relieve tension on the strings somewhat as you raise the neck.
You need to retune before checking for the buzz because the released tension on the strings will also lower the neck which counter acts your adjustment.
So in conclusion, tighten the truss rod one quarter turn, retune the guitar, check for buzz's, if it makes an improvement yet still buzz's repeat this process a few times making minor adjustments each time.
Its very important to note that you have to have an allen key that fits correctly our you could strip the allen nut.
Also when you are tightening the truss rod if it does not feel right, meaning if it feels to tight and you feel like you are going to strip it, put the guitar back together put it in its case and take it to an expert.
You should not have any problems doing this but if you do stop what you are doing before you damage you instrument.
Golden Ears