Buzz from cables/pickup?

Yorkie

Hi folks, 
I've got a PRS SE Tonare acoustic I bought from Peach a few years ago; I am a little guy so the guitar – with its 'parlour' style body – is a very good fit for my size. At this point, you can already feel there's a 'but' coming, right?

But.

The guitar has an annoying buzz, overtone or whatever the 'eck it is, most noticeable on the G string. I have in the past claimed to have tamed this buzz by i) tying up the overly long cables inside the body, ii) going down two string gauges, and iii) removing the 9V battery; none of those tweaks have got rid of the weird overtone/harmonic/whatever. Every time I sit down to play the guitar, the overtone is there and I end up trying to diagnose what is going on instead of playing. The recordings I sent to Peach were dismissed – "you're picking too hard" – and PRS went as far as insinuating that the buzz is in my head. Which it may just be because my wife says she can only 'sort of' hear it. But it annoys me to hell and back. 

The guitar is now out of warranty so I would like to come up with a plan to either fix the buzz once and for all, or simply just move it on and get something else without all those royal electronics I'm not using anyway. 

Here's what I think I could try: remove the battery compartment and shorten the cable to the bare minimum, try to remove PRS sound hole controls to solder the cables to get rid of the flimsy computer-style plastic connectors (they could very well be vibrating with the top).

Part of me thinks I shouldn't really bother; that without knowing exactly what's causing the buzz, I should just do a part-ex or try to move it on before I ruin the guitar. 

Thoughts?

Jon

ICBM

Honest opinion - sell it and get a better acoustic without all the crap electronics you don't need.

(With apologies to Tannin.)

For what it's worth I'm a little guy and I prefer dreadnoughts... although I do have a parlour too. Both of them came with electronics which I removed.

TheMadMick

It would be helpful to know if the buzz is present when amplified or when the guitar is unplugged.

If the latter, rather than go down in string gauge, go up. It may be fret buzz. You can test this by using a capo and moving it up the neck. If it goes, then a fret dress may be in order. It may also be that the nut slot(s) are to large - but unlikely.

Other than that you might actually like the sound you get with heavier strings. More sustain and less attack.

Give this thinking a try.  It might also be good to check the neck relief and the nut height. That's available on line. A good guitar tech / luthier should be able to sort it.

Don't like folks bad mouthing the PRS range of acoustics. I had one and enjoyed it. It's not a Martin or whatever, but they are good guitars in my experience.

ICBM

To be clear, I wasn't referring to PRS specifically - I just regard complex electronics in acoustic guitars as an unnecessary evil. If you don't *need* them - and the vast majority of players don't, even if they intend to play live with it - then they can cause all sorts of problems for no benefit. You will get a better guitar for the same money if it doesn't have them.

NB - I play acoustic guitars live, and I have pickups in them. Just the pickup and an endpin jack, nothing more - I use an outboard preamp, which does everything that onboard electronics do, but better, and doesn't cause any of the problems.

Yorkie

ICBM said:

Honest opinion - sell it and get a better acoustic without all the crap electronics you don't need.

This is option number 1 at the moment.  After the huge success with my new Strat, I might try the part-ex route again. 

ICBM said:

For what it's worth I'm a little guy and I prefer dreadnoughts... although I do have a parlour too. Both of them came with electronics which I removed.

I sold a dreadnought to get this one. I like the smaller body. 

TheMadMick said:

It would be helpful to know if the buzz is present when amplified or when the guitar is unplugged.

Unplugged. 

TheMadMick said:

If the latter, rather than go down in string gauge, go up. It may be fret buzz. You can test this by using a capo and moving it up the neck. If it goes, then a fret dress may be in order. It may also be that the nut slot(s) are to large - but unlikely.

It’s nothing to do with neck relief, the nut or the frets. They all look fine. The buzz affects the G string most often from the second fret onwards. 

TheMadMick said:

Other than that you might actually like the sound you get with heavier strings. More sustain and less attack.

Nope, I first detected the buzz with the heavier strings it came with from the shop. The buzz was even more noticeable back then. 

TheMadMick said:

 Give this thinking a try.  It might also be good to check the neck relief and the nut height. That's available on line. A good guitar tech / luthier should be able to sort it.

I will double check neck relief again in a minute, but I’m 99% sure it’s OK. The notes don’t choke anywhere. It’s some kind of overtone/harmonic, some kind of unwanted resonance caused by something I can’t see vibrating against the top or sides. For example, the battery used to cause a similar problem that was most obvious on the A string — I took it out and it went away. 

Jon

Supportact

I had a similar thing (on a different guitar/pickup system). There was a faint buzz only on some notes unplugged, but it was really hard to tell where it was coming from. After trying different strings, worrying something was wrong with the tuners, and trying to secure the wires that run between the endpin and pickup, and various other things it turned out that on the preamp (the type that's attached to the endpin block inside the guitar) a little plastic bit had worked loose and was just vibrating at certain frequencies.  Not really noticably, but enough to drive me mad! It was a relief once I'd worked it out because it was easy to fix but it took ages for me to work it out. One thing that did help was that I used a little mirror with a built in LED light* to see inside the body. Good luck!

*they're advertised as 'LED telescopic inspection mirror'

Yorkie

Supportact said:

I had a similar thing (on a different guitar/pickup system). There was a faint buzz only on some notes unplugged, but it was really hard to tell where it was coming from. After trying different strings, worrying something was wrong with the tuners, and trying to secure the wires that run between the endpin and pickup, and various other things it turned out that on the preamp (the type that's attached to the endpin block inside the guitar) a little plastic bit had worked loose and was just vibrating at certain frequencies.  Not really noticably, but enough to drive me mad! It was a relief once I'd worked it out because it was easy to fix but it took ages for me to work it out. One thing that did help was that I used a little mirror with a built in LED light* to see inside the body.

I have just been fiddling with the electronics a bit and confirmed my suspicion. It’s not just the plastic connectors, basically half of the PRS-branded soundhole electronics block is vibrating sympathetically with the top. If I put my hand on the top right where the electronics are, the buzz is gone. 

Option 1:  sell or part-ex. 

Option 2: keep it and blu-tack the whole electronics block?  

Supportact

That doesn't sound right at all! I'm not familiar with PRS acoustics at all so no idea what would fix it, but I guess at least you know what's causing it which is half the battle. I guess it depends whether you like it enough to try to sort it out or prefer to move it on and get something else. 

ICBM

Yorkie said:

Option 1:  sell or part-ex. 

Option 2: keep it and blu-tack the whole electronics block?  

Option 3: remove the electronics box (easier said than done with this type that are glued under the edge of the soundhole), and fix the buzz.

I didn’t know they made an acoustic-only version of this model until I was looking for pics of the battery holder/jack assembly - if so, and you like the rest of the guitar, I would just trade yours for one.

Yorkie

Option 3 is a non-starter for me, because the risk of damaging the guitar permanently is non-negligible. 

I'll have to give this some more thought. I might end up doing a trade or part-ex for something a little bit bigger, because the bass end on this guitar is – understandably – boxy. I'll see if I can try some other body sizes before making a final decision. Who knows, I might be going back to Yamaha after this. 

ICBM

Yorkie said:

I'll have to give this some more thought. I might end up doing a trade or part-ex for something a little bit bigger, because the bass end on this guitar is – understandably – boxy. I'll see if I can try some other body sizes before making a final decision. Who knows, I might be going back to Yamaha after this. 

If you do, make sure whatever you get is a pure acoustic - don’t be persuaded that you aren’t paying extra for electronics, or that it might be useful one day. If you need to amplify an acoustic for playing live you can always use a soundhole pickup - many of them are perfectly good these days, and don’t involve any permanent modification - or have a simple passive pickup fitted.

I may be accused of being a Luddite over this, but I just don’t understand the insistence on fitting complex electronics into guitars - as a repairer they were the absolute bane of my life, for the many different issues they caused, not just limited to what you’re experiencing.

Especially when the amplified sound I get using a plain passive pickup and an outboard modelling preamp is *better* than anything I’ve heard from an onboard system, no matter how complex, involving multiple pickups or internal mics etc - and without even the potential for any problems.

BillDL

If it was my guitar and I liked the ergonomics, playability and sound, I would try and use the Blu-Tack option to see if I could eliminate the buzz and then use a better solution if it worked.  It's unclear from what you have said whether it is the preamp control block that's buzzing against the soundboard or whether it's the parts that make up the unit that are vibrating against each other.  I don't know how easily accessible the controls are on that guitar, but if it's the control unit buzzing against the soundboard you might be able to get a blob of cheap clear thick "general purpose" glue in between somewhere as long as it isn't going onto a printed circuit where the solvent could eat into the tracks.  The type of glue is that which you often see in supermarkets that says it can be used to repair shoes, leather belts, etc, but isn't really much good for anything it says because it always remains rubbery rather than drying hard - something like the consistency of the softer glue sticks used in glue guns.  A blob of it that joined the outside casing of the control unit to the soundboard would be able to pull off without a lot of effort or risk of damaging the wood.  I wouldn't use something like clear silicone sealant that would leave a residue to which little would ever stick again.  If you can eliminate the sound with blu-tack, then a rubbery glue might be the way to go.

Yorkie

ICBM said:
If you do, make sure whatever you get is a pure acoustic - don’t be persuaded that you aren’t paying extra for electronics, or that it might be useful one day. If you need to amplify an acoustic for playing live you can always use a soundhole pickup - many of them are perfectly good these days, and don’t involve any permanent modification - or have a simple passive pickup fitted.

Well, that’s precisely the thing, I’d be getting something 100% electronics-free. Because what you’re describing was exactly my thinking when I got the PRS and I have regretted paying that extra £30 (~free) practically ever since.  

Yorkie

A Chat-GPT search has revealed that there's lots of other P20E users with the exact same problem on the exact same notes; some of them have even recorded and uploaded evidence, but no one found has a durable solution for it. I repeated the search, this time looking for P20 users reporting a buzz, and it did not find any hits. So it's either that the electronics-free version is also buzz-free, or that far fewer people went for the electronics-free version. 

PRS must have been aware of these issues, but chose to gaslight me. I'm giving up on it.

Looking at alternatives, I think I'd be keen to try some of the following: Taylor GS mini, Yamaha FS850, Fender FA-135 and Fender CC-60S. Please send some strong opinions my way. 

jca74

As a sample of 1, I have the electric-free version and it is absolutely fine...

Yorkie

jca74 said:

As a sample of 1, I have the electric-free version and it is absolutely fine...

Yeah, I wish I had gone for that one… I’d have 30 quid and a usable guitar. 

Yorkie

Just arrived from Gear4Music; I have managed to try all the models I had mentioned earlier in this thread. 

The Yamahas are nice but not my type. 

The Fenders sound more expensive than they are, but look their price. Pass. 

Then there’s the Taylor GS mini. I think it must be the guitar equivalent of a Tardis. It looked diminutive but sounded BIG and BOLD, and played effortlessly. I tried only the mahogany version, as the others either had cyberparts or were from a mirror universe. What a blast. 

I think I know what I want to do. 

Jon

BillDL

Your summation of the Fender acoustics (eg. CC-60S) is exactly what I would have said about them.  They sound remarkably good for really affordable guitars and are pretty well built and finished, but they aren't dressed up to look more expensive.  There's definitely better guitars if you have a fair amount extra to spend, but on a budget the Fender ones are a good choice.

drofluf

I’d echo what @BillDL says. My so. Has a Fender CC-60 and it’s a great guitar for the money

ICBM

Yorkie said:

Then there’s the Taylor GS mini. I think it must the guitar equivalent of a Tardis. It looked diminutive but sounded BIG and BOLD, and played effortlessly. I tried only the mahogany version, as the others either had cyberparts or were from a mirror universe. What a blast. 

I think I know what I want to do.

A couple of the players at the weekly jam night I go to have them. They sound great, and like a guitar twice the size.

Yorkie

ICBM said:
A couple of the players at the weekly jam night I go to have them. They sound great, and like a guitar twice the size.

Maybe it really is because it’s bigger on the inside! 

It’s settled, I need to come up with a plan to get a mahogany one.