My Seagull guitar doesn't like F#s

[achdu]

I have a Seagull S6 original that I bought intending to play
in DADGAD. Unfortunately the F# on the 4th string at the 4th
fret and 5th string at the 9th fret sound dead. I thought the
frets may be a little uneven, but when I re-tuned to open G
the F#, now on the 11th fret of the 5th string, was dull (F# on
the 4th string was still dull). All other notes are fine.

Does anybody know why this happens and is there a remedy?

I am now using it in open G playing bluesy finger style and
bottleneck, and it sounds ok, but I must admit to being
disappointed with the guitar. Perhaps a professional set up
might help, though it was set up before I bought it.

[DesmondWafers]

If it moved when you retuned it's almost certainly a wolf note.

[Bob Womack]

Solid wood guitars have an interesting phenomenon to them. After they are built it takes a while for the wood parts to figure out that they are no longer a tree and are now part of a guitar. As a result, they may exhibit certain little rebellious dead spots where they say, "Not gonna go there. No sir. Not gonna do it." They also can respond quite variably for a while as well. The lovely 1999 Taylor K14c (koa/cedar) that my wife gave me went "thunk, thunk, thunk" on the F# at the second fret on the sixth string for about four years - then it suddenly yielded to my requests and F# began to match the rest of the notes around it. Now, some twenty-one years later, I still go back and check it once in a while and it has never gone back. For the first year it varied in sound almost daily. One day the whole guitar was bright, the next it was dark and thunky. Back and forth. After the initial year it settled into its character.

I hear people who buy a brand new solid wood guitar and within weeks are dealing with this consternation. I can't guarantee that yours will react exactly like mine but I can share my experience. Try patience as a remedy.

Bob

[roylor4]

Could be high or low frets. Also could be that the neck is too straight. Open G and dadgad both have less tension than standard E tuning. The extra slack could be removing enough relief to cause the neck to be to flat, thereby causing incidental contact with adjacent frets.

[llew]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Solid wood guitars have an interesting phenomenon to them. After they are built it takes a while for the wood parts to figure out that they are no longer a tree and are now part of a guitar. As a result, they may exhibit certain little rebellious dead spots where they say, "Not gonna go there. No sir. Not gonna do it." They also can respond quite variably for a while as well. The lovely 1999 Taylor K14c (koa/cedar) that my wife gave me went "thunk, thunk, thunk" on the F# at the second fret on the sixth string for about four years - then it suddenly yielded to my requests and F# began to match the rest of the notes around it. Now, some twenty-one years later, I still go back and check it once in a while and it has never gone back. For the first year it varied in sound almost daily. One day the whole guitar was bright, the next it was dark and thunky. Back and forth. After the initial year it settled into its character.

I hear people who buy a brand new solid wood guitar and within weeks are dealing with this consternation. I can't guarantee that yours will react exactly like mine but I can share my experience. Try patience as a remedy.

Bob

Sage wisdom from Bob!

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by llew

Sage wisdom from Bob!

My thoughts as well.

[wrench68]

I too agree with Bob, if the guitar is the cause. Don't rule out the environment. If there is a door or piece of furniture in the room whose natural frequency is F#, it could emulate the wolf note.

[Wellington]

I have a wolf note on my Yamaha, very strange thing. It doesn't sustain like the rest of the notes, hopefully it goes away over time, might not. I only notice it on a couple songs.

[DesmondWafers]

If you want an easy way of checking if it's a wolf note, sing or hum the note f# into the guitar's soundhole. If the body resonates like crazy, it's a wolf note. As previously mentioned, there's a chance that it may go away with time...but there's just as much of a chance that it won't. Unfortunately it's simply part of playing guitar. Some people say their guitars don't have them, but from my understanding every guitar will have a frequency that the body resonates at and causes a note to come out louder and sustain less than the others. Generally the more resonant the guitar is (IE, the better it sounds) the more likely you're going to hear a wolf note because it contrasts against the rest of the great sounding notes. Of course, this body resonance doesn't necessarily always land exactly on a note within the guitar's tuning and some builders intentionally try to build a guitar with this frequency in between two notes to minimize its intrusion.

The issue with hoping for this issue to resolve with age is that, as far as I know, the guitar itself has no inclination that this note be in that magical "in between". Guitars do settle in, but I find it hard to believe that the guitar naturally wants this resonant frequency to be split between two notes rather than directly on one. Perhaps there is some mathematical reason that supports this theory, but in all of my reading and lazy research, it doesn't seem to be the case. If you play solo, you could always tune the guitar to something other than A440 and manually force the wolf note to be in between two frets.

I have this issue all 3 of my guitars to differing extents and I've found that the best way to deal with it is...to not deal with it. Most guitars have them and most people don't even know what a wolf tone is. F# is a reasonably good place to have one anyway, I always fear getting a dreadnought with a thuddy low G note.