String buzz

temporus

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Jul 19, 2010
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New Jersey
I've been slacking off for a few months on my practicing. Recently, I went to pick up my Uke, I started to notice some fret buzzing, something I never ran across last summer when I first bought the instrument. After some serious testing, I've narrowed down the cluprit fret. I'm not sure if this got introduced due to the winter dryness in the house, or what. I'm curious if there's any way to resolve this issue short of taking off the strings, masking my fretboard, and sanding down the offending fret. It's somewhere around the 14th fret, and it affects all four strings. And at that point, I'm thinking, that restringing with the old strings is a bad idea. A shame they still have plenty of life in them. Anyway, just was wondering what recommendations folks have. So long as I just want to play chords and the like in the lowest few hand positions, it's not a problem. But anything up over the seventh fret and I start to run into buzz bad enough that sometimes you can't even get a proper note out on the string at all.

Thanks,

Ed
 
Sanding down frets is not a good idea unless you know what you are doing. much better to get it set up properly by someone who knows what they are doing, particularly if it is an expensive instrument. If it is all four strings it doesn't sound like it is the strings that are causing the buzzing. Hope you manage to get it sorted!

Fin
 
I'm playing a Lanikai LU-21T. And the fret that's the "cause" of the buzzing is right about where the fretboard crosses over onto the body itself. If I'm playing the G string, it sounds fine for example, up until around the 8th or 9th fret. Then the pitch suddenly jumps. Instead of a nice clean halfstep up, it goes a few notes higher and buzzes badly, and if I continue walking my finger up the fretboard the buzzing continues, and the "note" stays the same until I hit that suspected culprit fret. Suddenly the note is the same, and all the buzzing gone. Then if I continue up the fretboard further, the notes are all fine again. Which is what makes me confident that I know which fret is the cause of the issue. Each of my strings seems to have a different point where the buzz kicks in, but on each instance it stops at the same exact fret.

Any idea what a setup would likely cost for a uke? (In NJ if anyone knows?) The last setup on my old acoustic guitar (+ new quality strings) cost me almost as much as I paid for this instrument.
 
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