Fret Buzz • Why does my acoustic guitar buzz on certain frets?

Why does my acoustic guitar buzz on certain frets?

"Certain frets" is actually a huge clue, and you should feel good about noticing it. If your guitar buzzed everywhere, evenly, I'd shrug and say "let's raise your action" and call it a day. But buzz that shows up on specific frets and not others means something in the neck or frets isn't flat — and that's a completely different can of worms.

Fret problems that cause buzz

There's more than one way for a fret to go bad, and each one causes the buzz a little differently.

Unseated or raised frets. Frets are pressed into slots, and they don't always stay put. Humidity swings shrink the fretboard wood around the fret tang, and a fret end can pop up just enough to catch the string before it reaches the fret you're actually pressing. This one's sneaky — it can show up anywhere on the neck, and it's usually one specific fret rather than a whole area gone bad.
Pitted frets. Years of string contact, especially with wound strings, wears deep little grooves into the fret exactly where you fret it, below the fret's original crown. The fret in front of that pit is now effectively taller by comparison, and the string buzzes against it before it ever gets to the note you're playing. (Background on why frets wear this way: Fret Wear • Why do frets wear out?.)
Uneven wear. The frets in your most-played spots — first few frets, your favorite chord shapes — wear down faster than the ones you barely touch. Over time that leaves you with a wavy, inconsistent fretboard profile: not one bad fret, but a whole run of them sitting at slightly different heights relative to each other.
Improper installation or leveling. Sometimes it's simpler than all of that: a factory or a previous repair just didn't seat or level the frets correctly to begin with. A fret hammered in slightly proud, or a level job that missed a couple of frets, bakes high spots in from day one.

Neck relief

Relief is the slight forward bow built into the neck — a little extra clearance in the middle of the fretboard so the string has room to vibrate without slapping into the frets. Too little relief (dead flat, or worse, back-bowed) closes off that clearance and causes buzz that shows up broadly in the middle of the neck, not at one isolated fret.

Too much relief overcorrects: it pushes your action higher than it needs to be, and can even cause a different kind of buzz where the neck straightens back out near the body. Relief is also the one cause on this list you can actually fix yourself in five minutes with a truss rod — once you've ruled out an actual bad fret.

A high fret is not the same problem as action that’s too low

People mix these up constantly, and it drives me up the wall. Low action buzzes everywhere, evenly, and gets better the second you raise it. A high fret — whether it's raised, pitted, unevenly worn, or just badly installed — buzzes in one exact spot no matter how high you crank the action, because the problem isn't clearance. It's that one point on the neck standing taller than it has any right to.

Try every single fret position on every string systematically. Start on the low E and go open to the last fret, and repeat on the others. Isolate the buzz. If it’s specific fret/string combos, it’s a fret problem. If it’s entire area of the fretboard it might be relief.

Do not go chasing this with random truss rod turns. You will make it worse, and a neck that's been cranked to mask a fret problem is a much bigger headache than the buzz ever was. Haven't ruled out the non-fret causes yet? Start with Fret Buzz • What is fret buzz and how do I fix it?. Book Now for a free evaluation and let's find the actual spot instead of guessing in the dark.