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Old 06-27-2009, 12:58 PM
TokyoNeko TokyoNeko is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Southern California
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Default "Fret Buzz" -- Picks or Playing Style?

As I attempt to expand my playing capabilities -- mainly on fingerstyling and using thumbpicks -- I began noticing what I considered a fret buzz issue on my Larrivee OM-50. (Background: I had the guitar worked on at Larrivee's Oxnard factory three months ago to fix similar issues.) So after messing with different picks all over the fretboard, here's what I found.As you can see, I tend to use picks with lighter gauges, so with the latter two picks there were no surprises. But when using a thumbpick for fingerstyling, I noticed some rattles that were a bit annoying.

So I took the guitar to Tecolote Guitar Works and had Bill Meyer take a look at it.
  • He was able to duplicate the buzz when he played with it, but only when using picks much thicker and stiffer than what I use (and driving the strings pretty hard to boot). When he used my Kelly thumbpick, he couldn't duplicate the buzz with "normal" fingerstyling.
  • He did find some uneven fret heights, but ironically they weren't the frets where buzzes were found. Overall, he felt that the fret work was excellent for a factory guitar.
  • He wasn't totally confident that spending the time to work on the frets would bring a noticeable improvement, given what he observed. He wanted to prevent a "lose-lose" situation in which 1) he would spend a lot of labor time on something and not get any discernable result and 2) I would be out of some cash and wait for the guitar to finish.
  • He was even hesitant to call this a "fret buzz," saying that he would usually qualify that term for a situation in which the buzz can be readily duplicated with many different picks and playing styles. In his opinion my guitar was actually in pretty good shape, where any little improvement probably couldn't justify the cost of repair.
  • He said that sometimes it's just a matter of a player's right-hand technique (or left-hand if you're a lefty), specifically the "attack" and the "angle" at which the pick strikes a string, that can cause a string to "buzz" or not. He suggested that I adjust the thumbpick positioning a little bit as a trial to see if that will cause the buzzing to go away.
So in the end, I took his recommendation and took the guitar back without having anything done to it. Given his reputation in town and the fact that he gave up an opportunity for income, I felt that he was honest and forthcoming on the whole issue. For the time being, I'm trying to be a little more gentle with the thumbpick and finding the right combination of volume and clarity.

So has anyone here experienced similar situation? Agree or disagree with Bill's assessment?
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