[Livingston]

Originally Posted by BrickGlass

Ever play a guitar and have a strange buzzing/vibrating/resonating sound going on if your finger isn't at the very front of the fret? A sound that comes if you move your finger just a tad towards the middle of the fret. Not quite like back buzzing (for those of you who know what that is), and not the sound of fret buzzing from a too low action. No, this sound is its own kind of weird. I bought a Cervantes (crossover II) and it had this happening on many frets on the A string. If I wasn't right behind the fret, it would sound very bizarre. So I tried some other Cervantes and noticed the same thing on some of them. After scouring the web for answers I found someone else who has heard and had to deal with this. Here is a quote from the article I found which was written by Paul Mcgill, who some of you may know as a builder of some mighty fine looking guitars:

"I had a classical guitar made by a notable maker in my shop once that would not stop buzzing. The frets were accurately aligned, and still it buzzed. This guitar was very lively and had great oscillation of its strings. After much time spent studying the problem it became clear that the noise disappeared if the note was played with the finger depressing the string right on top of the fret. If the finger was moved back even an 1/8th of an inch, the buzz reappeared. The strings had so much amplitude that the strings would accelerate right off the fret, causing a buzz even though everything was properly aligned. I raised the action, the buzz got worse. The owner said he liked bass wire on his guitars, so I installed huge bass wire in an attempt to eliminate the problem. I was skeptical, but after installing the larger wire, the noise was greatly reduced. It was still there if the player wasn't careful, but it was manageable."

So my question is have any of you had/heard this annoying problem and if so what did you do, if anything, to fix it?

Wow, interesting. I'm away from home at the moment, but will check my Cervantes Crossover when I get home later this week. I haven't noticed any buzzing before, but now I'm super curious.