An electric guitar rattles. The string is rattling - what to do? Incorrect sound production with the right hand

Many guitarists wonder: “why do the strings on the guitar rattle” or “why do the strings on the guitar ring.” This unpleasant sound makes us nervous. Let's figure out what could be the reason and how to solve the problem.

The first thing to do is to figure out where the ringing is coming from.

Accessories and electronics

Ringing and overtones are not always caused by the neck or the strings themselves. Often, some poorly screwed parts of the guitar hardware, such as parts of the tuners or the bridge of the guitar, ring. Even pickups and potentiometers can rattle, especially on some highly resonant notes.

On my Telecaster the bridge pickup and one of the potentiometers sometimes rattle. Why is this happening? If you play a lot, the guitar will play out and become more responsive to your playing. This becomes noticeable on such jambs that were not there before. Plus, over time, all sorts of things that can come loose will definitely come loose. Sod's Law.

By the way, do not forget to tighten the fastenings for the belt and straplocks. Go through the screws on the tuners and the bolts/washers that are located on the face of the neck. If the sound is caused by a loose sound, secure it in place. If possible, of course.

What to do: tighten everything that is loose.

How to figure out where the chatter comes from? The simplest thing is to catch what note your guitar is rattling on, strike the string, holding this note on the fingerboard, and use your ear to look for the place on the fingerboard or body where the unpleasant sound is coming from. It helps me 90% of the time. Ears are our everything.

Very often the cause of ringing and rattling is an incorrectly adjusted guitar truss rod. We have a separate article on the topic of adjusting deflection, which I myself regularly re-read, because... I just can’t remember which way to turn the anchor to loosen/tighten it. Read it here.

It must be said that the anchor will help you adjust the distance from the strings to the neck only in a limited area; this is not a panacea, but only a way to slightly improve the situation.

Where does adjusting the anchor help? In lower positions closer to the headstock.

If the case is completely advanced, adjusting the truss rod doesn’t really help or makes playing the guitar uncomfortable, you will be faced with a more complex procedure, which I always turn to a specialist for - polishing the frets.

Fret polishing

Why is fret polishing necessary? Then, if you like to play in certain positions, the frets there wear out faster, respectively, after these frets come less worn ones, respectively, they are higher from the fretboard than the previous ones, because they are not undermined by your playing. Therefore, polishing allows you to align all the frets and everything will sound again. Until the next polishing.

Of course, after a while there will be nothing left to polish and the question of replacing the frets will arise, but this is a topic for a separate article.

Threshold height

Another way to reduce chatter, besides adjusting the truss rod, is to raise the strings, i.e. increase the height of the nut/bridge. It helps if the strings rattle in the upper positions.

Sometimes more radical measures are needed. For example, my Telecaster rattled in the top positions no matter what I did, and the only way to fix the situation was to cut a deeper notch for the neck in the body. The neck was recessed a little more into the body and the sound became a hundred times clearer.

Where does bridge height help? In the upper positions - closer to the last frets and tailpiece.

Spring problem

Well, for starters, the most problematic type of guitar is the acoustic one. I had one very capricious American acoustics that did not like our climate and expressed its “fi” to me in every possible way. Besides the crack in the body right at the front that this guitar gave me after one dry winter, I have developed regular " spring problem"I had to find out that an acoustic guitar has a certain “spring” only after this problem arose. It irritated me quite a bit.

How does this sound? You hear a rattling sound somewhere under the guitar's bridge on the body, but you can't figure out where it's coming from. Springs are these things made of wood that are glued to the front of the guitar inside the body of the guitar. And they can peel off and rattle.

In general, these are the main reasons why guitar strings rattle. If this is not enough for you, write in the comments about your experience and we will definitely supplement our article.

Today we’ll look at a situation where a string is rattling and tell you what needs to be done in such cases.

Recently I have received about ten emails and comments with the question “What to do if the string rattles.” I thought that if the topic is relevant, why not write a short post about it. Here I am writing.

So, first, let's figure out why the unpleasant rattling sound occurs. There are two options here. The first is that for some reason the string catches the fretboard. The second is that it is not the string that is rattling at all, but a crooked or not fully inserted peg. Why is this happening?

1) Look at the strings.

a) In most cases, this happens when the standard strings are left on the guitar (they are always, to put it mildly, not of the best quality). Everything is simple here - install a new set.

b) Either the new strings have not yet been tightened properly. It’s even easier here - you need to wait 1-2 days, tune the guitar and see the result.

2) Pegs. We check the reliability and correctness of the pegs. Everything is elementary.

3) Thresholds. This happens when the top and/or bottom saddles are damaged (chips, various types of defects, string cutting into the saddle, plastic chipping). Often the problem can be eliminated on your own (remove the flash with a scalpel, place a match under the string - the Russian mind is inventive). Otherwise, we run to the store for new thresholds. They cost about 40 rubles apiece. We remove the strings, throw the old broken-down garbage to hell (for those who didn’t know, the sills are not fixed and can be easily removed, but are held on to the instrument only thanks to the strings pressing them). We install new plastic masks and put the strings back on. If the problem is not resolved, see paragraph (1) subparagraph (b).

4) Grif. Perhaps the problem is in the neck, or more precisely, with the deflection of the anchor, which determines the distance from the string to the neck. If it is less than normal, the strings hit the fingerboard. If it is greater, the vibration amplitude increases, and the string strikes again. Detailed instructions for this case are in this article.

If you are unable to fix the problem, try purchasing a new pack of strings and two nuts. As a last resort - a new guitar.

One of those problems that every musician has faced. And most often, the cause of this problem is not defects or problems with the instrument at all: in 9 out of 10 cases, the owner of the instrument is simply inattentive when tuning it and does not know the main reasons for the occurrence of overtones. Needless to say, getting rid of annoying rattling and achieving a clear sound of the instrument in this case is not difficult - and our short guide about the main causes of ringing and clanging strings will help you with this.

What to do if the strings are ringing?

In most cases, a dull sound with minimal sustain and a clearly audible ringing does not appear along the entire length of the string, but only in certain positions. At the first symptoms of rattling, we recommend that you carefully understand its causes: do not forget that some of these reasons can lead to problems with the guitar if you do not pay attention to them for a long time. In particular, this concerns incorrect adjustment of the truss rod, which we will discuss below and which can lead to the neck “leading” and its profile being damaged.

Most often, ringing appears not only in a certain position on the fingerboard, but also on certain strings: in the vast majority of cases, rattling affects bass strings due to the presence of winding on them, greater weight and greater thickness of such strings.

The main causes of ringing may be problems technical level and adjustment problems. With the latter, everything is clear: here the features of adjusting the position of the bridge and how high the strings are located from the neck can play a role, and a large percentage of cases are associated with incorrect adjustment of the neck anchor. Technical problems are less common, but they also create more problems for the owner of the instrument: due to poor quality assembly, due to the use of cheap materials on some guitars, individual elements of the bridge, nut, frets and even the soundboard of the instrument can become deformed, which inevitably leads to discomfort. and unnecessary sounds when playing.

Read this material to the end - and you will learn to understand the causes of string rattling and get rid of it in a matter of minutes.

Stage No. 1: determine what caused the ringing of the strings

So, just above we have already made it clear to you that there can be many reasons for the appearance of overtones - especially if we are talking about an inexpensive instrument. Before drawing a conclusion about the root cause of the ringing, you need to check each string in all positions. As we study, we write down or remember in what positions each of the strings rattles.

The strings ring at the first or third fret (i.e., rattling is observed mainly in the initial positions)

In this situation, the most likely cause is incorrect alignment of the anchor or problems with the frets. As for the profile of the neck, you should make sure that there is a slight deflection in it, i.e. the neck is slightly concave. Most often, rattling at the 1-3 frets appears due to the fact that the guitarist strives to make the neck profile perfectly flat or mistakenly achieves a curved neck: in this case, the string clamped on the first frets will cling to the 5-7 and higher frets.

The second option is wear of the frets themselves. If you often play in lower positions (closer to the nut), then the fret baffles on them will wear out much faster - accordingly, when the string is clamped, its seating will become lower and lower over time. If the plates on higher frets are not worn out so much, then sooner or later the string will begin to cling to them and we will get an annoying ringing.

Another problem that can cause ringing in the initial positions is a worn and ground nut, which also causes the strings to sit lower and similarly can catch higher frets.

Solution:

Check the deflection of the neck, if necessary, loosen the truss rod to obtain a slight natural deflection (ideal value is ~1.5-3 mm for the first string around the 7th fret when the string is clamped at the 1st and 14th frets). If you have never done this, then it is better to entrust this work to a guitar master;
Check the fret plates in their initial positions: if they are worn, then consult a guitar luthier and break the frets - this procedure, oddly enough, is not as time-consuming and financially expensive as many musicians imagine;
Check to see if the cuts in the top sill are worn out;
If the tool is new, take it back to the store and consult with the seller, as this may be a banal manufacturing defect.

Strings ring at high positions (~12th fret and above)

Most novice guitarists may not notice this problem, since they learn to play mainly on the first frets; many ignore this situation, considering it only a minor deviation from the norm. Of course, a slight ringing that does not affect the sustain and frequency characteristics of the sound is not a problem, but rattling that causes discomfort to the musician can also indicate serious problems with the instrument.

However, in this case, most likely the reason lies in the small gap between the string and the 12th fret, i.e. the strings are set too close to the fretboard. This problem generally only applies to acoustic, as well as electric and bass guitars.

Solution:

We start by checking the profile of the neck: recall that it should have a slight deflection of about 1.5-3 mm at the most concave point (approximately around the 7th fret, we check by clamping the first string at the 1st and 14th fret);
We adjust the string height: on electric and bass guitars by adjusting the height of the bridge saddles or tremolo system, the seat height of the bridge itself, on an acoustic guitar by adjusting the truss rod.

How to set up the truss rod: take the hex wrench that usually comes with the guitar; keys can also be purchased separately on our website in the “Keys for Guitar” section.

ATTENTION! Make no more than a third of a turn of the rod at a time, then leave the guitar to “rest” for 15-20 minutes. After the break, check the height of the strings, the deflection of the neck, be sure to make sure there is no ringing and evaluate the comfort of this neck setup. Repeat the procedure if necessary.

Open, unclamped strings ring

A less common, but no less frustrating problem for musicians is ringing on open strings with a corresponding deterioration in the sustain and frequency characteristics of the instrument's sound. In this case, there may be several reasons: a catastrophically incorrect deflection of the neck, which needs to be urgently corrected, severe wear of the nut, the wrong choice of “string gauge,” as well as the notorious defect if the instrument is completely new.

Make sure the neck does not have a convex profile and the truss rod is not too tight. If this is the problem, then immediately loosen the rod, following the recommendations from the previous paragraph of our article;
Check the nut: if the reason for the ringing of the open strings is that the cuts are worn out, then buy a new threshold and give it to a guitar maker for installation;
Make sure you choose the correct string thickness in relation to the tuning of your instrument and its overall features. You can find out about the recommended thickness for each of the popular tunings in our article.
If the tool is new, take it back to the store and consult with the seller, as this may be a manufacturing defect.

Guitar peg rattles

This problem is especially relevant for budget instruments and, in general, is most often encountered when playing acoustic instruments. The unpleasant rattling of the peg is almost inaudible on recording and when miking the instrument, but it greatly disturbs the musician himself and significantly reduces the pleasure of playing.

We pluck the open strings with our right hand;
While the strings are sounding, we touch each of the pegs in turn - this way we will identify the culprit of the rattling;
Next, either tighten the peg yourself, which no longer “sits” so tightly in the groove, or entrust this work to a master. As a last resort, replace the tuning mechanics. Obviously, the best solution would be to replace not just one of the pegs (of course, if we are not talking about replacing with an absolutely identical peg), but to buy a whole one at once set of guitar pegs.

Guitar body rattles

A fairly rare problem that can result in the instrument becoming completely unusable. First, “knock” the deck at the first suspicion that it is the deck that is rattling. To do this, you don’t need to make the strings sound - just lightly tap your hand on the body of the guitar: the appearance of additional overtones will mean that the problem lies precisely in the body.

Solution:

Don’t delay going to a specialist and don’t try to tune it yourself: a rattling sound on the deck may indicate a violation of the integrity of the housing structure. If you do not glue the top or rail in time, the instrument may become completely unusable.

conclusions

So, we have looked at the main reasons for the appearance of ringing and annoying rattling of guitar strings. What Guitarists Should Remember:

Distinguish negative ringing, which “kills” the sound of the string and sustain, from simple clanging, which appears due to a strong attack. To better understand the difference, compare the sound of your guitar to the slapping technique popular among bass players. Note that the sound of each note when playing slap is dense and full in frequency response, the sustain is not reduced as much as in the case of ringing on adjacent fret plates;
In most cases, ringing appears due to incorrect adjustment of the deflection of the neck and the height of the strings: start looking for the reasons in this area;
If ringing of the strings is observed on a new instrument for no apparent reason (there are no noticeable defects, the height of the strings and the deflection of the neck are adjusted, all elements of the guitar are new and not worn), hurry up to contact the seller and get advice from him.

The first thing to do is to figure out where the ringing is coming from.

Accessories and electronics

What to do: tighten everything that is loose.

It must be said that the anchor will help you adjust the distance from the strings to the neck only in a limited area; this is not a panacea, but only a way to slightly improve the situation.

Where does adjusting the anchor help? In lower positions closer to the headstock.

Fret polishing

Of course, after a while there will be nothing left to polish and the question of replacing the frets will arise, but this is a topic for a separate article.

Threshold height

Another way to reduce chatter, besides adjusting the truss rod, is to raise the strings, i.e. increase the height of the nut/bridge. It helps if the strings rattle in the upper positions.

Where does bridge height help? In the upper positions - closer to the last frets and tailpiece.

Spring problem

In general, these are the main reasons why guitar strings rattle. If this is not enough for you, write in the comments about your experience and we will definitely supplement our article.

Often, completely new guitars with fretted strings are brought in for diagnostics. Everything seemed to sound fine in the store, but after changing the demo strings, the new ones start to get along.
There are several reasons for this.

One, the most common on budget and mid-range guitars (although such problems also occur with expensive ones, but more on that later). Frets are installed in factories, but they do not go through the final polishing stage, since this lengthens the process of producing batches of guitars, and the conveyor does not wait. More often than not, this is the manual labor of specialists, which also increases the cost of the guitar, which is why the budget ones are not polished at all.

Another reason. Guitars are produced in one climatic conditions, but sold in completely different ones, taking into account the seasons. It turns out that the frets were installed at the same temperature and air humidity, then transported, during which conditions can change more than once, and with dramatic changes. Then they are in the warehouse/store for some time and the tree more or less calms down. But by this moment it could dry out, absorb moisture and then dry out again. Because of this, the frets slightly change their height and radius along with the wood. When the wood gets into a warmer place, the frets can not only fall out, but also turn out to be slightly longer than the width of the neck, and then you can even scratch your hand on them.

Another reason. Unfair attitude towards cargo, when from packaging the instrument at the factory to unpacking in the store there can be physical impacts on the instrument and the frets are simply pressed into the pickguard. By the way, a fairly light blow can disrupt the evenness of the relationship between the frets.
In general, here, in addition to climatic conditions, the “human factor” is added.

Further, we cannot exclude the reason for replacing strings with a different string gauge from the demo set.
If a set with a smaller gauge is installed, then the tension of the neck weakens and it bends, thereby the strings begin to get along in the area of the middle of the neck. The anchor needs to be loosened and the problem can be solved.
If the gauge of the new set of strings is thicker than the demo one, then the neck, on the contrary, bends slightly, thereby the guitarist begins to lower the bridge/saddles and, if necessary, tighten the neck. After which the strings also begin to get along (or they don’t, but we are now examining the problematic part).

That is, if a guitarist tunes the guitar trying to achieve ease of playing and the guitar begins to play well, then they need final polishing AND THIS IS NORMAL, especially not with expensive guitars.

Actually, the final polishing will be discussed further.

By the way, on some guitars the frets may even begin to move into cuts and here it is better to make a complete replacement. Or, as a last resort, glue the frets to fix them in the cuts. But it’s safer, of course, to replace it, especially since on guitars with this problem, the frets are made of soft alloys and they will still need to be replaced soon, so it’s better to do it right away.

This was a small digression, so let's continue.

This means that our frets all sit well in their places, do not “jump” in the cuts, and we take the guitar to the master (or do it ourselves, it’s up to you) for final polishing, or the so-called “micro grinding”, since this is not grinding used frets with pits from strings, namely leveling completely new frets.

Go.
First, we identify problem areas.
Marked with red arrows in the photo. The remaining marker is on part of the frets, that is, these are the places where the fret is slightly lower than the neighboring frets. And when a string hits this area, it begins to touch the next fret, which is just slightly higher than the one being pressed.

The frets are aligned with each other.

Well, the final stage is polishing the frets. Polishing makes the frets smoother and more gliding, this is very helpful when using braces during playing (bending) and for more precise contact of the string with the fret.

That's all. All that remains is to tighten the strings and set a comfortable height for ease of playing the guitar.