Odd fret buzz on 4003....

[Dave Kuratsu]

Hi,

I have a 2013 4003 that has benn levelled to within an inch of its life and plays beautifully across the board except around the 3rd to 6th fret mainly on the D string, slightly on the A string, which have a slight fret buzz on the decay of the note.

 

I'm stumped. The bass is currently flat neck with high action (3mm at 12th) and I've tried it with various levels of relief and action height. And always this buzz.... less so with high action or relief but still that area is the first to fret out.

 

The bass does seem to resonate more around the offending notes so could it be that pushing energy back into the string resulting in the rattley decay?...

 

The leveling seems good within 1 or 2 thou, with neck forced dead straight i can find no high fret.

 

Any body got any ideas?

Any thoughts much appreciated,

Dave

[BabyBlueSound]

Look I am pretty far away from being a luthier, but sounds like those frets might need a bit of grinding, they're possibly fractions of millimeters higher than they should be.

 

I had buzzy frets around the 16th-17th where you can't really set the neck, AND I had high action. A luthier grinding them a bit fixed them completely.

[Dave Kuratsu]

Thanks for the reply.... but as I say, they have been leveled and crowned to a high level (not literally of course).

 

And as far as I can measure they are dead flat if neck set dead flat....

 

So confused

 

Ta though!

[AndyTravis]

You got any spare strings?

 

I had a guy buy a Jackson Soloist from my shop years ago and I chased this buzz for about 2 days.

 

i took the strings off to inspect/level the frets…

 

the string had a kink in it.

[Dave Kuratsu]

Aye, thought about that....

Not tried other strings as the current ones are some expensive labe

lla flats....

But did inspect for kinks and all certainly looks well....

 

Tbh I'm wondering if heavy flats are to blame...

 

Ta again!

[Alanko]

Unless the strings are damaged, or they are La Bella low tension flats, then any other string will buzz if you are using regular high tension La Bellas.

 

I owned a 2008 4003 for a while. I am convinced it was slowly folding around the neck pickup route. Rickenbacker removed out a lot of wood for the relatively small footprint of the neck pickup in quite a critical structural location for many years of production. I gather they revised the routing at some point, so this might not be the case in a 2013 instrument.

 

Final thought is the trussrods. I didn't find I could use them independently and get more relief on one side of the neck by running one rod looser. I dialled out the relief with one rod but had to tighten the other just enough to stop it rattling. I think the rods themselves were tone thieves to some degree depending on how they were adjusted due to sympathetic vibrations, etc. Again, Rickenbacker take a lot of wood out the core of the neck to fit two rods to do a barely adequate job that is usually accomplished better with one rod. Good that RIC have recently seen sense and dropped down to a single rod.

 

My 4003 always buzzed, but part of the charm of a Rick is that husky semi musical fret buzz, so I lived with it.

[itu]

Strings... does the part between finger and bridge rattle, or between finger and nut? Sometimes sympathetic resonance may create funny sounds from the fretboard.