Peter's Blog

I normally practise guitar unplugged as it is usually done at breakfast time while half the house sleeps and the other half watches Peppa Pig. I only use the line6 pod or the amp at weekends. I could use headphones but I don't like all the cables.

So I was playing through the amp and feeling very unsatisfied at the horrible noises. The amp makes every string sound clear, clearer than any recording, and imperfections are obvious. Brush the wrong string and the results are hideous. While my playing is still pitiful it seemed to me that some of the noises were due to the guitar:

• string 1 fret 3 always buzzes however hard I fret, however close to the fret. The string was hitting against the next fret and buzzing.
• doing the A major chord, the G string sounded horrible, a kind of ‘dong' noise. For A major it isn't possible to hold the string close to the fret, two other fingers are in the way. I could reduce the sound by squeezing very tight but this didn't seem right: electric guitars are supposed to be easier to play than acoustics, how hard can acoustics be?
• general buzziness in the sound on frets 1-3

The guitar still had the original strings so I decided to try changing them to a new set of Ernie Balls I had. The new strings were nice, shiny, smooth, an improvement but they didn't stop the buzz.

I tried adjusting the string height at the saddle, raising the string to clear the fret but no joy.

I google and found frets.com which had a section on diagnosing fret buzz. It described my problem exactly, the truss rod was too tight, the neck should be a bit more curved to raise the strings above the Fretboard.

My Vintage V6 didn't come with a truss rod wrench but a normal Allen key fit so I adjusted it. I held a string down at fret 1 and where the neck meets the body and adjusted the string clearance midway between these points to .25 mm. Before I adjusted it this gap had been paper thin.

This made a big improvement, the buzz was gone and the G string was sounding much better. I had to tweek the saddles a bit more as now the action was too high. I took the G string too low at one stage and it wouldn't fret at all above fret 5.

After this I was happy with the guitar. I was content that any limitations in sound quality were due to my musicianship.

I found some great but simple chord progressions on the Internet:

• House if the Rising Sun: Am C D F Am C Am E
• Iggy Pop passenger: C F C E. I will be practising this one to death, both because I like the track (only thing by iggy pop I know) and because the shift from C to E is tricky and is the kind of thing I need to master.
• I Dont Want to Miss a Thing. Slightly complex as it involves Bm which is a fiddly barre chord but this tune would be useful for me to know…

My dummies book taught be how to do simple Chuck Berry rhythms, strumming two strings at a time. Sounds great but tiring to play, can't keep it up for more than a minute.