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Rattle.. even the tech doesnt want to know

mr.mow

mr.mow

Feb 11, 2009
999
368
Melbourne
Disclosures
Endorsing Artist: BBE/G&L Basses
#1
So my new to me SR arrived (Ive also asked on the EB forum so some of you may have read this before).

I get bad rattles on the E strings.. all the way down the neck consistently, relief is set right, all of the other strings are happy.

At the moment the heights are

G 2.0mm
D 2.1mm
A 2.4mm
E 3.5+mm and still rattles..

So, took it to the tech.. neck is not twisted, no frets are raised, relief is correct, nut is fine, tried 2 other sets of strings.. The damn E is buzzing on the board, I can't keep raising the action.

The advice I got from the tech was 'yep, some basses are just dogs)'.

His advice was to send it off for a fret dress.. That's going to cost a bit.. any other steps to look into before I spend money on something that may not work (or is a fret dress what others would recommend?)
 
#3
James Hart said:
how much of an angle is there in the E string from nut to the tuner?
Click to expand...

This much..

nut.jpg
:D
 
#5
If the string slot is cut to low you could be getting rattle between the fretted note and the nut. Hard to tell from the pics but if you hold down the low G on the E string the string should clear the first fret and not touch it. Hope this makes sense.
 
#6
Not string, have tried fenders, d'addarios and fender flats..

Not likely to be the nut as it does it fretted or unfretted and on every fret (Inc. 1st)..

You see my dilemma here.. This is really puzzling!
 
#8
Is it audible through an amplifier or just acoustically?

What I'm seeing is that the string seems to touch the actual head stock between the nut and the tuner. Strange things can happen then, and it might buzz there.

Since it buzzes fretted or unfretted I'd try to apply a mute (a.k.a a finger or two) to the various sections of the string to see if the buzz is reduced when you do that. Also try to apply a little pressure up, down, left and right to the bits between nut and tuner and between bridge saddles and string end.

It could also be some other piece of hardware that rattles. A loose screw somewhere, or a pickup pole piece that's not completely fixed.
 
#9
This may sound silly but it is easy to try. Take a little foil, fold it over itself 3 or 4 times, and put it under the E string between the nut and the string. If this works, the nut slot for the E is too deep.

The type of string you use shouldn't matter since the bottom of any E string will be where the slot puts it.

I got an Ibanez guitar that had the low E so deep I couldn't get it to stop buzzing without building up the nut slot and re-cutting it.


Worth a shot.
 
#10
SnakeKappele said:
This may sound silly but it is easy to try. Take a little foil, fold it over itself 3 or 4 times, and put it under the E string between the nut and the string. If this works, the nut slot for the E is too deep.

The type of string you use shouldn't matter since the bottom of any E string will be where the slot puts it.

I got an Ibanez guitar that had the low E so deep I couldn't get it to stop buzzing without building up the nut slot and re-cutting it.


Worth a shot.
Click to expand...

That is my recommendation as well... and where I was going with my question. I use a piece of business card or matchbook folded in half in place of the foil... but anything under the E string might prove/disprove the theory.
 
#12
I had a similar problem on one of my basses and after trying everything, it ended up being the truss rod buzzing. I would get buzzing whenever I played in the area of the 12th fret. I called all around town for quotes to get it fixed and finally decided I would call the builder (he lives in Florida now and I really didn't want to have to ship it down to him). By luck he was planning on being in town, so he stopped by my house, drilled a couple of holes in the back of the neck, injected silicone caulk and plugged the holes with some ebony position markers. End of buzz!

Ralf
 
#13
I have a bass that does this if the two grub screws that raise the bridge saddle (two screws per saddle on either side of the string) are not evenly adjusted for height. If you leave one screw just short of the other the bridge doesn't lean over and put even pressure onto each screw, it just seems to leave one grub screw barely touching and it just buzzes on every note
 
#16
walterw said:
shimming the string will only affect the open string. buzzing on fretted notes means the nut is not the problem.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. I've had basses where the string would buzz against the frets between the nut and the place the string was being fretted. The OP indicated that the buzzing happened when fretting on the 1st fret, though, so that probably indicates the nut is not the problem.

As others have said, though, the buzzing may actually be something besides string buzzing against fret, and that kind of thing can be tough to pin down...
 
#18
Snug up all the screws on the bass, damp the string behind the fretted notes to see if it goes away, play it unplugged with your ear in different places on the neck to see if you can isolate exactly where the sounds comes from, and play with different attacks to see if you can find a threshold that triggers it. This stuff will give more data to figure out what's going on.

John
 
#19
All interesting stuff, thanks guys.

Out of frustration I tried shimming the neck (rear, then front).. while it didn't solve the problem, it did show up something interesting.. I could get the E string to rattle even on the 20th fret..

So, if its rattling on the 20th (that leaves one fret before the string goes to the bridge).. yeah, its something not so obvious as the frets or neck relief are not really coming into play.

Fretting on the 20th and muting the strings back to the nut didn't fix the problem so I'm guessing its not the nut with the strings vibrating against the neck.

It is audible through the amp.

I've got a feeling when its fixed its going to be a d'oh moment!
 
#20
walterw said:
shimming the string will only affect the open string. buzzing on fretted notes means the nut is not the problem.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily...

Minimal relief combined with an overcut nut slot may cause "back buzz" when fretted. This happened to a particular David King zebrawood headless that you and I both worked on years back. The whole story: I noticed fret buzz while fretting the 7th-8th frets but could not resolve the problem by jacking up the string height. However, I did find that muting the string behind the fretted note silenced the buzz. I removed the string and stuck a layer or two of aluminum gum wrapper (Wrigley's...accept no substitute) in the nut slot, replaced the string, normalized string height, tuned to pitch, and we were good to go. IIRC, you shimmed the nut as a permanent repair and I never had another problem.

FTR, Walter really is the "go-to" guy here in Virginia Beach.

Riis
 

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