Buzzing Across First Fret Position

Hi friends, on one of my soprano ukes, I am getting a nasty string-buzz when I fret any of the strings at the first fret position. When I fret at the second fret position, and on up the fretboard from there, I don't get the buzz. Does this mean that the second fret is probably a little high? And is the remedy very complicated? Thanks!

Bill Sheehan said:

Hi friends, on one of my soprano ukes, I am getting a nasty string-buzz when I fret any of the strings at the first fret position. When I fret at the second fret position, and on up the fretboard from there, I don't get the buzz. Does this mean that the second fret is probably a little high? And is the remedy very complicated? Thanks!

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Either that or the nut has been slotted too deep. There are three fixes, one easy (and temporary), one a little harder, and one not do easy.

The easy fix is to shim the nut slots to raise the strings. Using a cut-up old business card provides adequate shim material. If it works, It's temporary and one of the other two.

The little harder fix is to remove the nut and add shim material in the nut channel. One can always replace the nut with a new one with higher string slots.

The not-so-easy is to dress the frets. This involves filing down the frets to a uniform height for all and remove any burrs. This should be done by someone with the right type of file and who has previously (successfully) done this task.

I think a fret rocker is used to test fret alignment. Google "fret rocker" and watch some videos.
I would think that any metal strait-edge could indicate a high fret, but the various small lengths of the commercial fret rockers let you clearly rock between just 3 frets, making the identification of the high fret easier.

*full disclosure, I don't have a fret rocker.

A credit card works pretty well as a fret rocker. Use it on edge so it spans frets 1-3 (and No other frets). If fret 2 is high you will be able to rock it to touch 1 or 3, but not both at the same time.

Thank you so much, Steve, Bob and Chris, for your input. I just tried the "credit card rocker" across the first three frets only, and I'm not getting any rocking motion whatsoever, nor is there any visual indication that the second fret might be a little high. I also went further up the fretboard, three frets at a time, and all seems well there too. Now that I think more about it, this is a newly-acquired uke (pre-owned), and when I first got it, the action seemed a little high, so I sanded down the saddle a moderate amount; is it possible that I went a little too low?

SteveZ said:

Either that or the nut has been slotted too deep. There are three fixes, one easy (and temporary), one a little harder, and one not do easy.

The easy fix is to shim the nut slots to raise the strings. Using a cut-up old business card provides adequate shim material. If it works, It's temporary and one of the other two.

The little harder fix is to remove the nut and add shim material in the nut channel. One can always replace the nut with a new one with higher string slots.

The not-so-easy is to dress the frets. This involves filing down the frets to a uniform height for all and remove any burrs. This should be done by someone with the right type of file and who has previously (successfully) done this task.

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I'm trying to picture this. On 1) you're moving the string to the side a little putting a piece of business card across the top of the nut slot and replacing?
2) kind of sounds like 1 but you've pulled the nut.
I'm making some cookie tin ukes with necks off really cheap ukes and having to figure some ways to keep buzzing down. It has a floating bridge so that's not helping. One of them actually plays really well but the floating bridge kind of messes with it.

OP my guess would be yes that sanding the bridge down has affected how close strings are to frets. I was reading that the string at the 12th fret shouldn't be closer than 2.5mm. Let's hope one of the real builders chime in here. Good luck!

Have you done the "third fret" test? Fret each string at the third fret, and look for the resulting gap between the string and the first fret. It should be only a few thousands at most, or enough to just barely hold two sheets of regular paper. But if it is now resting on the fret during this test, then I would try shimming the nut from underneath. Remember that when you file down the saddle you also drop the string height at the first fret by 5.6% of the drop at the saddle. That's not much, but if the height at the first fret was really low to start it could be enough to cause buzzing.

Captain, it looks my action at the 12th fret is right at 2.0 mm, which does seem pretty low!
Besley, I tried the "third fret test", and all seems okay there, so I'm thinking maybe the nut is okay, and that perhaps I just got a little too aggressive with my sanding down of the saddle. As I recall, with this uke, when I got it, the action was pretty darn high, to the point that all of the strings intonated unacceptably "sharp" at the 12th fret; my sanding seems to have corrected the intonation issue, but apparently caused a buzzing problem down in "first position"! Maybe I'll try shimming the saddle to get it a little taller and see if I can strike a balance between eliminating the buzz and keeping the intonation in the acceptable range.

I'm not disagreeing with any of the advice you've gotten from people who know way more then I do, but buzzing can be caused by so many things, and sound can be deceptive. Before you go any further in this Bill, have you checked the usual suspects like a loose tuner, loose strap pin, string ends, anything loose anywhere? My Tiny Tenor sounded like it was buzzing at the first fret and it turned out to be a bit of schmutz inside the body. Likewise, my car had a rattle that sounded like it was coming from somewhere under the hood and it was my sunglasses in the sunglasses compartment. I have a soundbar under my TV, no other speakers, and guests (and I) frequently think they hear sound from behind them. Try a vacuum cleaner with the crevice tool, if you haven't already.

Thank you, Ziret, and yes, I'll definitely check out the spectrum of possibilities that you mentioned, before I do anything radical! Sometimes I think it's a good idea to sort of put things aside and step back a little, just to re-evaluate and get a fresh perspective. I'm also remembering how I'm not a huge fan of saddle-shimming because of the way the saddle ends up not occupying the full depth of the "saddle channel" and can then have a tendency to get tilted forward when the strings are tuned up to pitch (at least this seems to be the case with the credit-card shimming method). If none of the points that you mention turn out to be the culprit, I may consider just ordering a new saddle, and going from there...

Okay, a quick supplement... I have just tuned this uke (an aNueNue "Eagle" soprano) a half-step higher; it seems that the resulting increase in the string tension has substantially eliminated the buzzing! And the bonus is that the uke sings noticeably better now, so maybe I've also stumbled upon its sweet spot! Well, for the time being at least, I think I'll let things be... Thanks to all for your input !!

Bill Sheehan said:

Okay, a quick supplement... I have just tuned this uke (an aNueNue "Eagle" soprano) a half-step higher; it seems that the resulting increase in the string tension has substantially eliminated the buzzing! And the bonus is that the uke sings noticeably better now, so maybe I've also stumbled upon its sweet spot! Well, for the time being at least, I think I'll let things be... Thanks to all for your input !!

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Yes, Soprano's like being tuned up from gCEA so I'm glad that it works. I will add that based on what you had stated that the buzzing was only when fretting on the first fret and not when open or fretting higher that your original hypothesis was correct. The 2nd fret is high.

anthonyg said:

.......your original hypothesis was correct. The 2nd fret is high.

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Or maybe the higher tension added some relief to the neck? Or changed the neck angle? (Doubtful I know with uke strings, but not impossible.)

Great points, Anthony and Besley. Thanks for taking the time to add these additional thoughts. For now I think I'll leave things as-is and just monitor how it goes...

The more likely explanation is that the higher tuned strings vibrate in a smaller arc and thus do not contact the high fret.
Brad

BuzzBD said:

The more likely explanation is that the higher tuned strings vibrate in a smaller arc and thus do not contact the high fret.
Brad

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That's very likely the case, Brad. It's funny, though, I can't see any indication that the second fret is sitting high; is it common for a high fret to be undetectable upon visual inspection?

It is very difficult to see these things and even a fret rocker may not show anything. I have had cases where you just have to do a full fret leveling and recrown job.
Brad

Thanks, Brad. I think for the time being I'll leave things "status quo", although, in keeping with your observations about the vibration arc, I may go ahead and bump my tuning on this uke up another half-step, to aDF#B, and see how it goes...

Hi, Bill! Similar buzz happened 2nd fret on 6th string in my cheep guitalele.

I have two friends who are guitar techs. I bring it to one of them. He checked 2nd fret with his metal ruler as fret rocker. The 2nd fret is bit higher than 1st and 3rd fret and ruler rocked. As the guitalele was cheep, he didn't want to fix and suggested me to sand the 2nd fret a bit with sandpaper. I asked him if I can use hammer to lower the fret wire. He told me not to use hammer. Actually hammer is bit dangerous to use fret wire without much attention. I once used it in order to remove nut on my guitalele and it hurt a bit on the fret. As long as you can not feel anything wrong with your credit card rocker test, you should not do anything on 2nd fret. It's not so small or unclear things which we can not distinguish well.

Many people do not like raise tuning. Because it raise more pressure on bridge and body. And string instruments are good at sharp and bad at flat in terms of playing. We can easily to take sharp because we just need put finger on or capo on. Guitar is good at sharp keys (C, G, D, A, E). On the other hand, wind instruments are good at flat. And many jazz songs are played on flat keys (F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db). Wind instrument are easy to take flat, they just need to release holed by finger tips. And may wind instruments are made on flat keys. Some people takes half step down tuning on guitar. Jimi Hendrix did that too. But not many people do half step up tuning. If you want half step up, we normally put capo on and it is easy. If I were you, I change strings. Just change strings sometimes leads to good results, and my guitar tech often suggest me. High tension strings may have same effect as your half or one step up tunings.

I did nothing on my buzz on my guitalele so far. I do not use much 2nd fret of 6th strings. And if I put more pressure on my finger tip, the buzz disappear. It is just same as your buzz, more tension better sound. I use extralight gauge on the guitalele. If I really want to remove the buzz, I will try light gauge or medium gauge.

Thanks, Tush, I am grateful for your thoughts! This seems to be one of those situations in which the cause of the buzzing could be a number of different things, but no single thing is obvious or really stands out. I was tempted to try lightly sanding my second fret, but the little voice inside my head keeps saying, "Nooooooo!" And again, so far I'm having pretty good luck just having tuned the uke a half-step higher (haven't gone a full step as yet), and at that level the string tension still feels very much within the range of reason-- not too squiggly, not too tight.