Buzzing strat, at the bridge?

[badgermark]

So I dug my strat out, gave it a polish and a play in order to sell it. BUT! It has a super annoying buzzing sound when playing in the middle of the neck, but also when open  :x.

Now the buzzing is really hollow, and sounds like it's coming from the bridge end. Now this is a Mexi strat, adjusting the truss rod yields a little change. But still annoying.

Now I don't want to sell the guitar in this condition, is there anything obvious that could cause this?

[AndyR]

Is it a hard-tail or a trem strat?

If the latter, it could be the springs - when they resonate they give a hollow kind of sound. Try taking the back plate off and damping the springs while playing some notes that cause the noise.

[badgermark]

Normal strat trem, and it's not the springs. Don't have a clue what it is, but it's now happening when the strings are played open. Any other suggestions?

[FELINEGUITARS]

Could be that the truss rod is too tight so that the open strings are hitting somewhere in the middle of the neck

[AndyR]

If it's not what Mr Felineguitars suggests, and not the trem springs, I can only think of one other thing that makes it seem like it's at the bridge end.

I haven't had this on a strat for a very long time, but I have had it recently on a guitar with a similar scratchplate design. Is all the scratchplate stuff secure? Is it one of the pickups vibrating? A wire vibrating on the underside of the scratchplate? That sort of thing.

I had a problem like that on a Variax - when the thing was at concert pitch, the D on 5th fret 5th string caused this nasty hollow buzz. The D on the 7th fret 3rd string did it as well (open D on the 4th didn't though!). I tracked it down to something loose under the scratchplate by pressing the scratchplate while it was buzzing. I haven't bothered fixing it because it comes and goes, and BKP pickups in new/old guitars have rendered the Variax slightly less attractive!

I've just had another thought - is the truss-rod itself OK? I used to have an early epiphone SG that had a bit of an issue with a "buzz" that seemed to come from various places. Eventually I discovered that if you wrapped the back of the neck with your knuckles you got this hollow rattle inside the neck!! Sometimes it would resonate with certain notes, but didn't seem to come out of the amp too much. I've no idea how "bad" this was for the guitar - neck seemed reasonably stable - but I got rid of it as soon as possible!