After I got back to uni after the easter holidays I realised that my Edwards felt pretty weird compared to my Ibanez at home.
The action was loads higher on the lower strings than the higher strings, there was probably too much relief in the neck, but somehow i was still getting a fair bit of fret buzz.
For this reason I decided to give the guitar a bit of a set-up. I set it up according to recommended medium action measurements I found on the internet.
Gap between string and fret at 12th fret:
Low E: 6/64"
High E: 4/64"
and i set the truss rod with a bit less relief than before, but probably still too much.
This was rubbish. loads of fret buzz. I wanted to take it to Feline but it was a bit of a mission away and I don't have money to burn on travelling so I asked around and was recommended the Guitar Spares and Repairs shop in Birmingham just next to 'Reverb' (ex-Sound Control).
Me and my mate rob took our guitars down there for a set-up on Saturday, I was quoted £40 for a set-up (I provided strings - D'Addario 11s), and I thought that that seemed pretty reasonable so I went for it.
Today I went to get the guitar back. It plays beautifully - what he seems to have done is polish the frets, straighten the neck more and lower the action more. As you can imagine this did not cure the buzz. In fact the buzz is a lot worse than it's ever been on this guitar; it's not being amplified but it is annoying me all the same (I'm ridiculously anal about noises and vibrations that shouldn't be there). I know I play extremely hard and the guy that set it up told me this and said that playing like that I'm bound to get buzz even with 14s on it. I thought fair enough and figured I'd try to improve my technique at home. Handed over the money and left.
Few hours later and I'm feeling severely ripped off - none of my other guitars buzz like this. It buzzes even when I play lightly in some places. Perhaps it needs a fret dress, but being quite a high quality guitar and also quite new I wouldn't have expected it to need a fret dress so soon, but if it does then why didn't the guy give it one? The one thing I asked him to fix when I took it in was the bloody fret buzz and he's just made it loads worse. The job he's done I could easily have done myself in less than an hour and I've paid £40 for it.
The guy in the shop seemed like a really nice bloke, very knowledgeable, loads of business (about 3 people came in to this little out-of-town shop with guitars that needed fixing in the 10 minutes or so that I was there), and he came very highly recommended by a number of people (apparently he's the go-to guy in Brum for set-ups). I don't know what to think;
do I have a really odd picking technique?
does the guitar just need the frets sorting?
did I get ripped with a bad-quality job?
are my standards just too high?
is my Ibanez just amazing?
I don't remember any other guitars I've owned or played being so prone to fret buzz, so either way I'm going to take the guitar back in tomorrow and be nice and explain how I'm feeling.
What do you lot think?
Apologies for the super-long post!
