Low Fret?

RvB

Bit of story to this one, bare with me, there's a rant involved.

Got my eldest lad an Ibanez ARZ307 7 string for Christmas, new from Andertons. He played it for about half an hour in total on Christmas & boxing day and said it's making a strange noise. Had a bit of play and found a really strong buzz/rattle/vibration when you play the 4th fret on the A string, the notes pretty dead, like you haven't fretted it properly and the vibration goes right through the guitar. Onlyseems to be in that spot though.

At first I thought the neck had just settled a bit and probably needed a truss rod adjustment and/or a bit tweaking to the action, but no! I kept slackening off the truss rod, got to the point where I couldn't turn it anymore, raised the bridge (much more than playable too), but couldn't get it to stop buzzing. I'm getting a bit more concerned at this point and thought I'd just try a fret rocker on the neck to see if there's a high fret somewhere. With the rocker across 1, 2 & 3 it doesn't move, across 2,3 & 4 it rocks, across 3,4 & 5 it doesn't rock, across 4, 5 & 6 it rocks. So I'm thinking it's the 4th fret that is low. Anything else I might be missing?

I decided I'm not messing with it and call up Andertons, they were pretty helpful and got it picked up, my lad was obviously pretty disappointed to loose his new guitar. Fast forward to today and the guitar arrives back... And it is exactly the same!!! bar stewards. So I ring them up and the guy on the phone reads off the repair notes saying the guitar had a poor setup (no shit sherlock, I put a note in the box to say why!), so it seems all they did was adjust the truss rod back and set the action and make a note that there was acceptable rattle for a 7 string guitar!!!! Needless to say I wasn't impressed when he said that, got them to take it back again and made sure they noted the exact location of the problem! Teenager still disappointed!

bertie

Ben ?

Bogwhoppit

I sent a guitar back to Andertons with the same issue - different brand of Guitar, the next day it was put back on sale and sold a few weeks later. 

 

Fast forward to a forum that represents the guitar I had and there is a post about a guitar bought from Andertons with a low fret - yep you guessed right.

 

Too busy making videos.

RvB

bertie said:

Ben ?

Aye, 'tis I.

bertie

never realised you had teenage progeny................... time rolls on !!!       :-O