Our ‘Complete Setup’ service covers just about everything that affects your playing experience, including checking every fret from E to e up and down the fretboard to ensure that all are level.
If we find just one or two high frets, we’ll typically just reseat or file the unruly frets at no extra charge, but there is a five dollar charge for each high fret that we have to level and we’ll charge that if there are more than a couple or if it requires much work.
The first thing you must do with a high fret, is try to reseat that fret. If it’s loose and has popped up from the fretboard and you just start filing the fret, you’ll actually create a bigger problem than you started with!
Once you do reseat the fret, you need to stabilize it by gluing. After all, it wouldn’t have popped loose if it was fitted tightly in the fret slot. So if it popped up once, it very well might do it again.
If the fret can’t be reseated, it must be filed – very carefully! Because if you file just a couple thousandths of an inch too much, you’ve just made every other fret “high”!
So, we notified a customer that he had so many uneven frets that we recommended a Level & Crown, to get everything in good order, because a single fret that is even just slightly higher than its neighbors will cause buzzing.
The customer declined and insisted that proper adjustment of the truss rod would surely stop any buzzing!
The truss rod is there to counteract the forces of the strings pulling up on the headstock and prevent the neck from bowing excessively. It is not intended to set string height (action), though that can be a side-consequence.
When we adjust the truss rod, we want to keep the neck straight and not let it be bowed by the force of the strings. However, allowing a very slight – 0.010″ inch when properly measured, bow lets us set the string heights just a little bit lower.
If there is excessive neck bow (i.e.: truss rod too loose), it can cause buzzing when you fret near the eighth to tenth fret since the higher frets are now, literally “higher”.
But there is nothing you can do with a truss rod that will prevent buzzing on a high fret. Here’s why –
Guitars are designed so that strings get slightly higher as they progress from the nut (near the headstock) to the saddle(s). This way, when you fret at, say, the fifth fret, the string will clear over the top of the sixth fret without contacting it (and buzzing).
Adjusting the neck bow near the center of the neck with the truss rod will not effectively lower that high fret.
By the way, excessively tightening the truss rod can cause a back bow, which will definitely cause buzzing on frets near the center of the fretboard.
Back to our customer who had “learned” how to stop any and all buzzing by adjusting the truss rod – all I can say is, if you’re going to learn guitar setups on the internet, at least find a reputable shop, with great reviews, to do your learning from.
