Buzzing on first fret

[Robert]

My new Fender neck is great, but when I play on the first fret, it seems like it's lower than other frets, because each string buzzes a bit. When I play the note Ab (or G#) on the G string for example, I can tell the string is touching the 2nd fret as it vibrates.

I didn't notice this the first week I had the neck, weird. I'm going to change the strings and see if that makes a difference.

Any tips or suggestions?

 

[Spudman]

Get an old dry bone, run it over a file to generate a small pile of bone dust. Add a drop of super glue to the pile, mix with a toothpick. Take a bit of the mixture and put it in the E string nut slot. Wipe of any excess. Let dry. File new groove. That will get your height back up.

You might want to check that fret #2 isn't too high. Either sight down the neck from the tuners to see or fret the E at the first and 4th frets and see if #2 is touching the string.

 

[chordshredder]

Robert
Now that you have a git-tar collection, a Fret Rocker from Stewart Macdonald comes highly recommended. I had two guitars (same brand) that both had very high first frets, if I hadnt had a good straight edge they would still have high action. Now much more fun to play.

 

[Robert]

Fret Rocker? Never heard of that - I will check up on that.

I changed strings last night. I took off the strings, put a straight edge on top of the frets. It is clear that the 1st fret is lower than the other ones. I tried sticking a piece of paper between each fret and the straight edge. The only place the paper would slip under was on the 1st fret.
Not much I can about this besides removing the fret or get all of the other ones filed down and re-crowned?

 

[aeolian]

From the symptom and your test it is obvious that the first fret is low.

Depends on how much lower the first fret is compared to the other frets you may only need to file down the second fret to fix the problem. The problem is that once you have the second fret filed down then the third fret buzzs, then you have to deal with the third fret, and so on down the line. It may be much simpler to get only the first fret pulled and replaced. If you have already checked for buzzing at all the other frets, this may be the better solution.

Also, how bad is the buzz? Does it kill your sustain, and does the buzz come through your amplifier? If not, you can just ignore it.

Just my 2 cents worth (worth less than 2 Canadian cents).

 

[snarph]

Try backing off the truss rod about a quarter turn I recently acquired two guitars from different manufactures with the same problems and thats all it took

in short the neck was adjusted to strait needed a little relief

You can always set it back with no problem

 

[Robert]

Thank guys, I'll mess with it and see.

It's not a whole lot of buzz, but enough to annoy me... my 2 CDN cents...