Fret Buzz • What is fret buzz and how do I fix it?

What is fret buzz and how do I fix it?

Are you sure it's actually fret buzz? Before you touch a single screw, sit with that question for a second — because "buzz" is one of the most lazily diagnosed words in guitar repair. A decent chunk of the buzz complaints that land on my bench aren't fret-related at all.

Dude, guitars resonate. Everything on them is a little bit loose, a little bit sympathetic, a little bit alive — which means buzz can come from a dozen places that have nothing to do with the fretboard. A rattly tuner post. A loose truss rod cover. A pickup ring vibrating against the top. Schmutzy bits on the saddle.

It's one of the most common complaints in guitar repair, and also one of the most commonly misdiagnosed — because "buzz" is a symptom, not a diagnosis. About half the guitars that come in with a "buzz problem" actually have two or three unrelated things going on that all sound the same to an untrained ear.

Truss rod rangers

Inexperienced players hear something buzzy, panic, and immediately start cranking on the truss rod like it's a magic wand for your guitar. It isn't. Confirm that the strings are actually hitting frets before you do anything else, or you're just playing with tools like a monkey.

Not sure? Check these out:

Once you've actually confirmed it's the frets, fine — let's talk about real fret buzz.

Fret buzz happens when a vibrating string makes unintended contact with a fret — or frets — during its normal vibration arc. Stop guessing. Buzz has a pattern, and the pattern is basically a confession if you know how to read it:

Low action. Buzzes fairly evenly across the whole neck. Raise the action and it improves. This is the one everyone jumps to first, and it's genuinely the least interesting cause. And 9 times out of 10, it was not the actual problem. You just covered it up with a blunt fix.
Back bow. If buzz is concentrated in the middle of the fretboard, chances are the neck is back-bowed or just too perfectly flat. There's no clearance exactly where a vibrating string needs it most: the middle. This gets misdiagnosed as "low action" constantly, which is how people end up with guitars strung like tennis rackets for no reason.
Uneven or high frets. Buzz at specific, isolated locations no matter how much you raise the overall action means the problem is one fret being taller — or its neighbors being lower — not a general clearance issue. You cannot fix a real fret problem with a truss rod. Full stop.
Nut slot cut too low. Buzz specifically on open strings that clears up once you fret past the first fret is cheap, fixable, and shockingly common on factory setups. In this case, the truss rod can sometimes be your short-term friend: loosening it slightly may create a little extra clearance at the nut. That's not a great long-term fix, but it might get you through temporarily.

Fixing fret buzz

Don't try. Seriously: bring it to someone who knows what they're actually f***cking doing, or you could make things worse. Proper fret work takes the right tools and the know-how to test, level, crown, and polish. There's technique involved.

Book Now for a free evaluation — I might even be able to fix it while you watch.