Minimizing fret buzz?

  • Thread starter Thread starter omtayslick
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omtayslick

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Any tips or techniques for minimizing fret buzz from electric guitars? I'm talking about occaisional buzz from not-so-clean chording. I know the best course of action is to re-record. But assuming that is not an option, is there anything I can do with EQ, etc. to make these tracks more useable?
 
No replies? Yeah, I figured there wasn't a fix for this.
 
I've no answers or help....but the question had me wondering.
I would guess its in the upper freq's, but you'd probably need a hellaciously fine tuned eq to cut something like that out?

like the old chineese saying "its easier to do than undo."

:D
 
I'm guessing you're looking for a post recording solution? Sorry, no help here but, if your question is more about set up and maintenance, you might consider posting this in the guitar section.
 
punkin said:
I'm guessing you're looking for a post recording solution? Sorry, no help here but, if your question is more about set up and maintenance, you might consider posting this in the guitar section.
Click to expand...

It's post-recording. It's a performance issue. Thanks.
 
If it's just in a couple of places, you might want to ask if it really needs to be addressed. Leaving in a couple of performance mistakes like that can sometimes make the performance sound more "organic" or give it more character than trying to find the perfect grid.

If it's such a bad performance where the fret buzz is pervasive, then you pretty much have a bad take that really should be replaced. I know you said that's not an option in this case, but it's probably what you're stuck with.

It's a longshot that's may not be worth the effort, but if you are all out of other options you might want to try and see if you can ID the buzz as a harmonic series using a frequency analyzer. If so, you might be able to attack it somewhat either with an EQ that has a harmonic filter function or with a series of narrow Q parametric EQ cuts attacking the culprit frequencies.

The problems/tricks with this this idea is that the buzz may just be too complicated to filter easily that way, and/or, even if you can filter it fairly well, you may have a hard time completly cutting out the "cancer" sound without removing too much of the "good tissue" sound. That is, you might have to shred the good sound of the guitar by trying to remove the buzz.

G.
 
performance noise

Many instruments have their associated suite of noises when played. With guitars you get fret buzz and string squeak. With saxes you get finger clicks on the buttons. With drums you get the occasional squeaky pedal, and so on.

I am not bothered by any of these, because I think they are just part of the performance. I'd much prefer energetic noise to sterile silence.

However, if it is really bothering you, and is a serious distraction from the performance, I can understand a deisre to remove it. Options are few. One I'd like to suggest is to see if you can find a similar, but buzz-less note (or chord) from somewhere else and replace the offending one with it.
 
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