Hi Doc, Could the Sitar buzzing be actually coming from your bridge. Some of the cheaper chinese bridges have pretty loose bridge piece assemblies and can give that sitary buzz when played. Sometimes can get temporarily get rid of by lifting the string up off the bridge and placing down again.
Tony
Originally Posted by vh2580
It wasn't coming from the bridge because the original bridge had been replaced with a Nashville bridge I had bought from Stewmac.
Easy fix, Doc. The buzzing is because the string isn't sitting in the nut slot properly. Use the strings in a hacksaw motion to angle the slot back towards the tuners. When the string is terminating at the front of the nut, no more buzzing.
'As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll.'
Pabs is smack on the money there it will also intonate better
I figured out what the problem was, when the SG guitar was made, the shelf that the nut fits on wasn't cut exactly 90 degrees to the centreline of the neck, I have just done a couple of measurements of the distance of the first fret to the front edge of the nut, on the high E-String side of the neck there's a distance of 32.5mm between the front edge of the nut to the first fret, on the low E-String side of the neck the distance is 33.5mm, so there's a difference of about 1mm, I'm thinking of using a square file to see if I can correct this difference so that the distances are the same, hopefully that will fix everything and maybe get the intonation fixed as well since the low E String, A-String, and D-String all indicate that the intonation is flat and the saddles need to be adjusted closer to the neck, problem is there's not much adjustment left.
The guitar does not have it's old Chinese Bridge installed, I replaced it with a new Nashville Bridge I bought online from Stewmac and the new bridge works great.
Just thought I'd warn you guys not to buy Graphtech Tusq XL nuts, they don't work as the manufacturer claims they do, the manufacturer claims that they enhance harmonics and help reduce tuning-stability issues due to friction because the material the nut is made out of contains PTFE (Polytetrafluroethylene) which is 500 times slipperier than Graphite, well I tried them but they made things worse rather than better, they did nothing to reduce tuning-stability issues, they also caused some strings to buzz like a sitar.
Sorry Graphtech, but I'm not buying any more of your products.
Thanks for the heads up Doc.
That's weird. I have three schecters factory fitted with Tusq nuts and have never had a problem. I've also fitted some Tusq Xl to previous builds and found them quite good and relatively easy to work with and once filed and set up work really well.
Sounds to me like it's simply not set up properly. The sitar like buzzing is from the string sitting too high at the back side of the nut. Filing the correct angle in to the grooves so the string terminates at the front of the nut rather than the back will solve this. It will probably solve the other issues as well.
'As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll.'
Actually, the cause of the sitar buzzing was that the nut slots on the Tusq XL nut were cut too wide for the gauge if strings I was using (46-10 gauge), and the string was vibrating against the side of the nut due to the string splaying-out from the nut towards the tuners.
I've decided to get rid of the Tusq XL nut (it was installed on my LP Studio because the original Corian Nut had string-friction issues) and replace it with a Zero-Glide nut that includes a Zero Fret.
http://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and...lide_Nuts.html
I bought two Zero-Glide nuts slotted for Gibson guitars from Stewmac (one extra as a spare in case I made a mistake), still waiting for them to arrive in the post, one is for my LP Studio and if the install goes well I'll install the spare one on the Chibson SG.
Because the strings will be sitting on an actual fret rather than in a nut-slot, the Zero-Glide nut should practically eliminate string-friction and sitar-buzzing.
Last edited by DrNomis_44; 13-01-2016 at 06:35 AM.
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