Crowdster buzzing badly...

[paleolith54]

... E and B strings, at and above twelfth fret. The neck relief seems right; I did recently drop string gauge from a .012 set to a .011 set, and I'm tempted to go back up and see if that's the culprit.

Other ideas? Thanks, guys.

[tom]

i would expect you'd want to take just a little tension off the neck when you go down in string size. doesn't take much to make things happy.

[paleolith54]

i would expect you'd want to take just a little tension off the neck when you go down in string size. doesn't take much to make things happy.
Will do, thanks Tom.

[Pietro]

One more thing...

I found with the Crowdster, it sounds best if I "dig in" less than on my acoustic guitar. (I also use 11s)

It's an easy adjustment if you turn your acoustic amp up just a bit...

[tom]

the best advice i ever got about amplifying an acoustic was to have your monitor louder than you want. it will make you play lighter which is always a good thing with any piezo.

[paleolith54]

One more thing...

I found with the Crowdster, it sounds best if I "dig in" less than on my acoustic guitar. (I also use 11s)

It's an easy adjustment if you turn your acoustic amp up just a bit...
Thanks Pietro, i did notice that as i experimented today.

[paleolith54]

Will do, thanks Tom.

Guys, tried all the ideas: seems unavoidable that I have a dead spot on the skinny E string, 14th fret. All else is fine, even putting the neck tension back where it was.

I suspect it's been there all along, and I've only hit that F# in passing on my way to something else, whereas now I'm landing on it.

Is there anything I can check myself before having it looked at by a pro? Am I overlooking anything?

Thanks again.

[tom]

when one note is acting up i always look at the string first. even new they can have a slight kink in them. a fret issue would almost always affect more than one string.
as for dead spots, if you look hard enough just about any mahogany necked guitar will have one somewhere. j s and i talk regularly about it, always worse on mahogany necks. but mahogany has a sound worth dealing with it for. my favorite olson acoustic has a nasty one but it never stops me from playing it.

[paleolith54]

when one note is acting up i always look at the string first. even new they can have a slight kink in them. a fret issue would almost always affect more than one string.
as for dead spots, if you look hard enough just about any mahogany necked guitar will have one somewhere. j s and i talk regularly about it, always worse on mahogany necks. but mahogany has a sound worth dealing with it for. my favorite olson acoustic has a nasty one but it never stops me from playing it.

Ha! Perspective is a wonderful thing. I guess even your guitars, in the final analysis, are subject to physics like everything else.

Thanks.

[Pietro]

Interesting. I don't really notice any dead spots on any of my FOUR mahogany neck/mahogany body(w/ maple cap)/rosewood fretboard/guitars.

I guess if I really looked I might find one? I won't bother, as I enjoy playing them and making music far too much for such endeavors.

[tom]

if you go looking, and not playing, which i don't recommend, you'll find notes that don't ring as loud or as long as the rest, but that's not music(or at least not how anyone i know plays).