Low E Problems

[LeftLewis]

Hello

I just piked up this lovely Faith Venus Cutaway guitar, left handed and basically all the string's are sounding great apart from the Low E which is catching on the fret wire and making this awful buzzing sound, it's the only problem i have with this guitar and i would recommend anyone to get one if they wanted a nice acoustic, I just wounder if anyone had idea's how i can fix this myself or will this be getting took to the local guitar tech?

All the best

Lewi

[Bill Ashton]

Without any other particulars, I might guess that either your action is too low or you do not have enough relief in your neck.

Try this to check relief. Capo at the first fret, hold low E string down where the neck meets the body. At about the fifth to eighth fret, you should have just enough space between the fret and the string to slide in a business card without it touching. If you cannot, or the string is actually on the fret, you do not have enough relief (bow) in your neck. Really, this measurement is done with feeler gauges and must confrom to the manufacturer's specs, but what I describe is just a quick and dirty field test to see if that is in fact the problem.

While it is not hard to do this adjustment yourself, you do have to have a feel for things mechanical. Loosening your neck's truss rod, perhaps a quarter turn mightake care of the problem, but if you are not comfortable doing that then you really should have a luthier do it for you...and generally, that is not a person doing it on the counter at a music store!

Alternatively, you nut may be cut too low on the low E string, and that is probably more a job for a luthier...though again, a home-brew method of Crazy-glue and bone powder is what fixed my Gibson, new out of the showroom...

Best of luck; I am sure there are others here that can also give you advice.

[LeftLewis]

Bill Ashton - Thank's a lot i tried that out and there was no room at all if im honest. I've took it down to my local guitar store were the owner is a luthier and his adjusting the neck and giving it a full setup and such.

And the store i bought they guitar from want nothing to do with this problem and are trying to blame it on the gauge of the string's even though they havn't took a look at the guitar.

[Bill Ashton]

Well, that will hopefully get you straightened out. Certainly the gauge of string can have some to do with it, but I would think the seller would at least look at it for you...not saying much for them!

Good luck and hope you will be playing her soon.

PS: Whats an Ashton amp ???