hi all,
I took a bit of a gamble today. a person on gumtree was selling a fender tele MIM as a project. upon reading the ad and talking to the seller, he had bought the telecaster, put strings on it but it chokes, buzzes or is "dead" at frets 7-10.
I ended up buying the guitar as it was a great bargain, but that's the gamble!
upon playing it at frets 1-4 it plays great, also at frets 12 onwards.
I checked the relief at the 7th fret and decided to relieve it. the neck instantly was relieved and the buzzing got better at frets 7-10 on low E and high E string,
i'm going to leave the adjustment overnight.
what else can I do to trouble shoot the issue?
i'm hoping I can get lots of advice so I can get this guitar playing great
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Low E: frets 7,8,9,10, & 16-21 all buzzing
A string: 7&10 buzzing & 8 &9 dead
D string: frets 8,9,10 dead
G string: frets 8,9,10 buzzing and choking
B string: frets 7,8,9,10 choking
E string all fine
So, my suggestion would be to go right back to basics and do a full setup......
If you are still getting choking out then it is likely that the neck has a hump in the high fret region
A fret dress may be a solution for that...adding fallaway to the highest frets too.
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
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You may also have an extremely high 11th fret, which you can check with the edge of a credit card.
does a slight rock help matters?
If it's one fret that is causing an issue it's likely that it has slightly popped up. Levelling the frets without attending to this rarely works well. You may find all that is needed is wicking some thin CA glue (superglue but very thin, runny stuff) under the fret and then pushing and clamping it down cures the fault.
You should take from those that there are many tools that will work for a fret level. Don't let it put you off if you want to have a go.
but yeah, they must be seated properly first
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I followed your guidance. here is the result: the bass strings still buzz with dead spots around the 8th & 9Th frets. G,B,E strings got better but still buzz badly but no dead choking spots. thanks