Gallato Debarre RS-1939 FRET BUZZ

nd23rin

Hey Guys-

I got my Gallato about a month ago, and it came strung with what I was told were Gallato's house brand. I was told they were .10's, but nonetheless I noticed always some decent fretbuzz. The buzz was mostly on the E,A,D strings. On the low E it is almost all the way up through 12th fret but not really when played open.

The A and D strings buzz only between really about the 5th and 9th. I tried loosening the truss rod about two quarter turns last night. I waited overnight, and it really is not much better at all. The only thing that changed really is the action. I forget to mention that before I did this I put some argentine 10's on it.

I am really at a loss, because I paid about $1300 for this guitar, and it seems like there are multiple setup issues. I am led to believe this by the fact that loosening the rod did not affect buzz at all, meaning something else is going on.

Any Suggestions!!

Thanks

Jeff Moore

I've bought several quite high end guitars, and even more low end guitars. All but one needed set up work just to be "good enough" (95% of what they can be). Without my postulating yet about why a new mid priced guitar needs work, I want to postulate that they all need work to some extent.
The one used guitar I payed the most for didn't need work because it had just had the work done.

Your guitar is probably a great guitar. The tolerances necessary to give you great sound and playability are pretty tight. My thinking is (I'm postulating now!) that wood moves. Old wood on old guitars moves less than old wood that has recently been machined, and a lot less than new wood-newly machined, but it all moves (think: shrink - twist) even if you control the climate. If you don't control the climate in a forced air heated house where the relative humidity easily drops to 10% (for instance), you will destroy your set up pretty quick (never mind the rest of the guitar).

The question for the maker becomes:
"How much labor ($200-400+) will I put into perfecting this new guitar's set up and will my market understand and repay me, especially when the value of that labor will be lost in a few months if I sell within my climatic region and weeks if I ship this guitar to Arizona or Minnesota?
If, as usual, this guitar spend its first months of life on a rack in a non-humidified retail outlet, that labor is mostly waste, and I'll only get resentment about both set up and price."

Everytime I do my own crude set ups, and especially if I pay the local set up genius to do it, I get back a guitar that sounds different and better than I remembered or thought possible (if its a new guitar).

This is just my experience: After 40 years of playing guitar I've only bought two set ups.
For the first few decades I couldn't dream of owning a guitar worth the price of a refret job. But after getting a $450 refret on a VR, which sounded pretty good anyway, I couldn't believe what a great guitar I had. Every note rang, I could practice "forever" rather than half an hour at a pop, and having already done a rough fret leveling myself on it, I learned what an experienced set up guy can do! MAGIC-ART: and a guitar that hits its own potential.

Whatever shape your new neck is in, there will be notes that sound good and those that don't (as long as your bridge isn't horribly low), now imagine for a moment that they all sound and play equally good.

BluesBop Harry

You might have dropped the string gauge from 11s to 10s by accident.

Check the humidity first. If it's low (under 40%) use a humidifier and wait a week to see if things improve. As the belly of the guitar rises so will the action getting you back to buzz free.

If the humidity is not an issue your bridge could be too low, try shimming it and if that solves your problem get a taller bridge.
The buzz should go away by having a healthy action (3- 3.5 mm at the 12 fret on the low E, measure the distance between the top of the fret and the bottom of the string without pressing the string down).
Don't mess with the trussrod, you only need a hair of relief at the 7 fret, press the string at the 1st and 14th frets and look under the string at the 7 fret against light, is there a visible gap?

If all that fails then you might have uneven frets and a fret level would be called for.

A little bit of fret buzz, especially if you pick hard, is "normal" on these guitars but that's a special kind of buzz that some guitars have, others just buzz.

I hope that helps you

frater

Yes, IMO a good GJ guitar should have the right "buzz " like the originals had... few makers have nailed that (Eimers is one of these, listen to this sound sample:
http://www.eimersguitars.com/pizzarelli_long.html)

nd23rin

Well, I don't know if this can even be right but without pushing anything down measuring between top of 12th fret wire and bottom of low E using feeler gauges....Im getting around 2.3-2.4mm?

Any direction to go from there, I feel like if I had to loosen the truss rod enough to bring that to 3.25 let's say...the guitar would be very tough to play (succesfully).

Should the action on a GJ be more akin to a bluegrass acoustic or closer to an electric feel? I always assumed clser to the acoustic, but this one felt more like my Les Paul from the moment I took it out of the case!

BluesBop Harry

2.5mm is on the low side... and that explains your buzz trouble.
Two ways around this:
Humidifier.
Again look at the humidity % at the place where you keep your guitar:
When humidity drops the arc on the top of these kind of guitars sinks a bit thus making the action lower.
So try using a soundhole humidifier for a week and check the action again to see if it's better.

If humidity is above 40% and action's still too low:
Shims
If you shim your bridge by 1mm you'll get your action around 3mm and that should be OK both for playability and the buzz issue plus your guitar will probably sound much better and punchier. It might take a couple of weeks to get used to the stiffer feel though.
For shimming material you can use hardwood veneer, used credit cards, cardboard, metro tickets...
If this solves your problem then I suggest getting a new taller bridge.



DON'T USE THE TRUSSROD TO ADJUST ACTION. Action is adjusted at the bridge.
The neck should be almost straight with just a little relief, I use .010

Jeff Moore

You would probably know what you want to do if you had enough information about your fretboard.

Bluesbops time tested method should be in everybodies kit for a rough and quick measure. Hold down the 1st fret and 14th fret and touch the string down and look at every fret between. Takes long fingers (but no tools and a few seconds).

In the poorer decades, I came up with a way to find out exactly where how my frets are doing.
All you need is an 18 inch straightedge (steel, from an art supply) and various thicknesses of paper from the trash can for feeler gauges.

First sight down the neck from the headstock (with the strings on, and up to pitch) and see how much bow (relief) is in your neck.
You can do this on a curved (relieved) neck but a straight neck is best to learn on. Leave the strings on.
Straighten the neck with the truss rod if you've got one (my guitars mostly don't). Lay the edge of the straight edge between the high E & B strings between the nut and bridge so one edge touches all the frets. Adjust the truss rod till the neck is as flat as it'll get, if its still not straight.
Now take paper (from card stock, copy paper and even receipts from a cash register-the thinnest) and using light pressure to hold the straightedge on the frets, slide the paper (start with copy paper) between the straightedge and frets. You'll find it will slide until it hits a the fret that is actually touching the straightedge (a high fret).

You can (if you want) ignore the 14th and higher frets as these often drop, that's ok. Again, you can sight down your fretboard from the headstock and see the drop in these last 5-6 frets if its there.

Using a business card (hopefully you won't need anything thicker) to find your lowest frets, and the receipt paper when the copy paper just slides with resistance, you'll get a picture within a couple thousanths of an inch of the relative level of your frets.

You can fold the paper to double the thickness, and add the papers of different thicknesses together and slide them both.

Don't get caught up in precision because you can't really precisely "straighten" the neck with the truss to begin with. You just need enough info to know how good or bad the frets are off RELATIVE to each other. Your likely to find insignificant differences in adjacent frets, but if copy paper won't slide under one fret and will slide under the ones on either side, you've got enough difference that your sound and playability trade offs are getting to far.

If you didn't straighten the neck much in the first place, the card stock will slide under lots of frets. Don't fret: You can add a piece of copy paper to your card stock and still get your snapshot, thus you can evaluate your frets without the truss rod straightening at all, its just a lot tricker to analyze and get your results on a curved line of frets.

Don't forget your zero fret. Builders usually leave these real high such that playing first fret notes is hard. I like my zero fret the same level as the others.

Now move your procedure to the middle of the frets (between the G&D) then to the low E & A.
If one or more of your frets are out of whack with the neighbor frets by much, you can try the workarounds from the other posts (shims etc) That will buy you some time.

Some of the priciest guitars have barely finished and uneven fretwork. Because I can do it myself I'd rather pay the builder to do the things I can't do (build guitars).

The only guitars I never have to mess with, until the frets are worn out, are the ones I put carbon fiber plates clean through the length and thickness of the necks. They never move! They play like butter forever.

bluetrain

Hi!

I have the same guitar and I had similar problems when the guitar arrived. The guitar had simply just too low bridge and too much truss rod relief. The buzz I had didn't go away even after fret leveling. After that I made the neck as straight as possible and replaced the bridge with higher one so that I have about 3.0mm action now. Actually I have to use still 2mm shims under the bridge. Now the guitar starts to play much better but there's still a little buzzing around 5th fret but it's not too irritating. I noticed that using Galli silk&steel 10s the buzz was almost gone compared to savarez 11s.

frater

I'm officially founding the "Save The Gypsy Buzz" Party...