I did my own level and re-crown on my Wamorth Strat project and mostly the guitar is playing way better with way less buzz. However, I am having a localized buzz I'm trying to diagnose, and trying to see if I'm on the right track.
The 9th fret on the high E string has a bad buzz with a sitar effect when I dig in a bit with my pick. It's fine when I pick lightly. I checked the neck with a fret rocker and I'm not able to detect any high/low spots.
My guess here is the fret is too flat and there's not a clean takeoff point, despite my efforts to recrown. I have run into a similar sitar effect on an open string, and I corrected by fixing the nut slot to have a cleaner takeoff point.
I had to do a lot of work to remove all the file scratches and then polishing up the frets, and I'm worried I rounded/flattened the newly crowned frets too much while working up through the grits. I had made my way pretty far up in the grits before realizing I still had some deeper scratches, and I had to start the scratch removal/polishing procedure all over.
Since I'm not finding any high/low spots anywhere with a fret rocker, I'm thinking I can just repeat the recrowning procedure, right?
Any other things that might have gone wrong during my level/crown/polish process I should look at?
Here was my procedure:
The 9th fret on the high E string has a bad buzz with a sitar effect when I dig in a bit with my pick. It's fine when I pick lightly. I checked the neck with a fret rocker and I'm not able to detect any high/low spots.
My guess here is the fret is too flat and there's not a clean takeoff point, despite my efforts to recrown. I have run into a similar sitar effect on an open string, and I corrected by fixing the nut slot to have a cleaner takeoff point.
I had to do a lot of work to remove all the file scratches and then polishing up the frets, and I'm worried I rounded/flattened the newly crowned frets too much while working up through the grits. I had made my way pretty far up in the grits before realizing I still had some deeper scratches, and I had to start the scratch removal/polishing procedure all over.
Since I'm not finding any high/low spots anywhere with a fret rocker, I'm thinking I can just repeat the recrowning procedure, right?
Any other things that might have gone wrong during my level/crown/polish process I should look at?
Here was my procedure:
- Straightened the neck, taped off the fretboard and marked top of the frets with a Sharpie
- Leveled the frets with 220-grit sandpaper on a leveling beam until flat across the fretboard
- Marked tops of frets again with Sharpie
- Started with StewMac 150-grit centered compact Z-file, using the wider side of the file only
- Followed up with 300-grit original compact Z-file, taking a few passes with either side until I had a narrow Sharpie line left
- I tried the 200/400/800 grit Stew Mac fret erasors, but didn't love those, and ended up using wet/dry sandpaper to slightly round the top and remove scratches
- I worked my up through sandpaper grits before using Micro Mesh pads to polish the frets up to a shine