billionairebum
Hi
I have come to the one forum I know filled with wise men to give me some guidance.
I recently just purchased a gretsch pro jet and it is in need of some serious serious setting up.
It was going out of tune, buzzing and all types of weirdness.
Is there someone that you guys could recommend that will be able to do a full set up and sort out
Any other issues with it?
Thank you Gentlemen.
Big-G
Two things that come to mind straight away, is is it a Bigsby Trem model? If so, then string gauge is very important. I find anything less than .11's on a bigsby tends to go out of tune very easily. .10's can work, but generally will still go out of tune.
Related to the bigsby is the nut.... If the nut is not cut correctly for the gauge of strings, it can create friction, and the strings effectively don't slip smoothly across the nut, which again in tern creates tuning instability.
The buzzing could be one, or all, of a few things.... Firstly, if your neck is too straight, or sitting backwards, then the frets around the middle of the neck (from say fret 7 to 12) will be slightly proud compared to the others, and this will allow the string to touch these frets when you are fretting other notes further down the neck. The best way is to look down the length of the neck and see if it is slightly curved? It should have a gentle curve with away from the strings around the mid frets. Another possibility is that there are a few frets that are slightly misaligned, creating high spots. The strings as they vibrate will catch these high spots and create the buzz. Again looking down the neck can show these high spots, as certain frets will look a little out of sync with the rest. Then another buzz issue could simply be that the brisdge has been set too low, and your action needs to come up slightly to avoid fouling on the frets.
There are lots of guides to setting up guitars on the internet, which can be pretty helpful.
If you do not feel confident to adjust the truss rod your self, then your best bet is to take it to an experienced guitar technician who can set it up for you. They normally charge anything up to around R600 for a decent setup, but it can be worth it when you get a good guy working on your guitar.
Hope that helps a little?
Regards
G!
