Technical
EddieA® Quality Guitar Components
There are valid questions any guitarist can ask about the build of your musical instrument.
We start with the neck. As you know there are ‘bolt-on’ ‘set-neck’ and ‘through-neck’
Which is best is a question likely to procure several different answers. From tone to practical use.
The bolt-on idea was by Fender years ago to save time and money on construction.
So ask yourself, why is every ‘entry level’ and child’s guitar a bolt-on neck?
Because only a luthier would take the time and craftsmanship for a set-neck.
We will also use bolt-on but we prefer the quality of a set-necks more often.
Guitartist® EddieA® will use the following:
- EMG Pickups preferred, but also Fisher, Gibson, Fender, DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan and more.
- Tuning Machines – Grover, Fender, PRS, D’Addario, Gibson, Taylor, Sperzel and many more.
- Potentialmeters – Normally matching brands to pickups, but one favorite is Seymour Duncan
- Mahogany bodies and Paulwlonia (the strongest tinsel strength for the weight of any wood)
- Necks refined and finished by hand for smooth and no buz, action 2 to 3 mm string height
- Bridges: Floyd Rose, Gibson, Fender, Schaller, Hipshot. Babicz, Gotoh, Ibanez and more.
- We use locking nuts or standard depending on tremolo or standard bridge.
Every guitar that passes through our shop, is personally created by EddieA®
This is not just a promise but a fact. Eddie has no plans for ‘assembly line’ or mass produced guitars. So when you purchase a guitar from the EddieA® line of guitars,
you are buying piece of unique art, one of a kind, from top of the headstock to the
strap peg at the bottom, it is all a single one off project by the hands of EddieA®
The Faux Rock
I have noticed how many times the inquiry came up as “How heavy is the guitar?” Because they look like rock, is not a reason to believe they are heavy as rock. The materials I use have been in R&D for years. It is amazingly durable, will not come off at a bump or grind. The finish can be damaged, I would treat it like a guitar with a standard finish, but you will not have to baby it – They’re tough!. But I am hear to tell you. The Rock Guitars are BADASS!! People, friends and band mates will stop in their tracks and ask “What the ****, where did you get that?!
Meticulous Fret Work
The fret work is not for everybody. I use an 8 step process to every single fret that doesn’t pass with a fret rocker from StewMac which is important, because there are knock-off tools out there and are far inferior to others. I am not affiliated nor endorsing StewMac, many luthiers agree, their quality is excellent. So, every single fret is inspected to be level to it’s two neighbors. If you ever installed tile you know, this problem. If you look at 9 squares, and the center tile is out of level at one corner.
If you adjust that tile, the other three corners are now out of alignment. Frets can be like that. If you are trying to do this yourself and take one down too far, you are looking at fret replacement. On set necks, like most of the guitars I produce, this is something to seriously consider. If you don’t have the experience of ruining a fret board, you may end up doing just that!
After inspecting every single fret, all that are too high must be addressed and corrected to avoid fret buzz or worse.
There is more info on that subject on the tab above as ‘fret buzz”
This is a painstaking process that takes a lot of time and careful use of a skilled eye and hands. Then, using a leveling bar as FretGuru makes, that is a precision tool for an exact purpose. Perfect leveling is very important. Finally you get to the final phase, which is polishing. Before one of my guitars are put out for sale, this whole process is done just for the neck. Do you think factories have the time to do this? You know they don’t. So, consider that you are purchasing an instrument that has had untold hours of hand crafted detail work that will never be compared to an assembly line mass production guitar. And this is just ONE phase of many!
The bow or relief of the guitar neck
Relief is also extremely important. This is simply the spacing between the strings and the frets at a specific point of they players or luthiers choosing. EddieA guitars have been set for a middle ground of a heavy to light action player. This is usually preferred. If you are extra heavy or extra light, email me if you with to purchase a guitar and want that adjustment made.
Great Read
While I’d love to take credit for this article because it was so WELL written. There is no author name, but credit goes to Haze Guitars website. All copyrights go to that site, it is just spot on regarding fret buzz.
I need to talk about fret buzz. This is a bit difficult for a repair guy to do because, as I get into this, it can sound like I’m trying to dodge responsibility for shoddy work. That’s not the case—I actually feel pretty strongly about not doing that. The thing is though, it’s important for a player to be realistic about his or her needs and expectations when it comes to setup. Nowhere is this more of an issue than with fret buzz.
Here’s a bold, but true, statement: The guitar is an imperfect instrument.
In order to generate noise it’s necessary to make a string vibrate up and down. Unless you’re fingering at the very end of the neck, under that vibrating string is a length of fingerboard, usually with a number of frets installed in it. It’s not like a harp, where you pluck a string and it rings beautifully and unimpeded—your guitar or bass has a bunch of wood and metal just dying to interfere with that vibrating sting.
Careful fret leveling and good setup can get an instrument playing cleanly. However, bear in mind that your playing style and technique, and the choices you make around action and strings, will have a major bearing on how cleanly that guitar plays.
Is buzz bad?
Yes.
Most of the time.
However, if you’ve got a low action on your electric guitar or bass and you tell me you can hear a buzz when you play it unamplified, I’m going to ask you if that buzz can be heard when you play it through the amp, in a normal setting.
Buzzes on electric instruments that can’t be heard through the amp are often the price of that low action you like. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be there but it’s not an ideal world (see note above on harps). If you want to play your electric guitar unamplified, it might need to be set up differently. Remember that there’s a reason most acoustic instruments are not set up with actions as low as their electric cousins.
Consider action
Is your action appropriate for your style of playing? We’ve talked about this before—if you’re a hard player, you can’t expect to play with the same action as a really light picker. Bigger string vibrations need more room to move and a higher action is the answer.
Consider string gauge
Super light stings wobble about more on a particular instrument. A heavier gauge might give you a cleaner result. Playing the heaviest strings you’re comfortable with is always good advice.
The elephant in the room: technique
Ooooh. This is the difficult bit.
I’m (very, very) far from being the best player in the world. However, I’ve worked on these things enough that, at least, I’m pretty good when it comes to fingering/fretting notes cleanly. There have been times when I’ll play a guitar that someone’s brought in for buzzing problems and it’ll play just fine.
That’s tricky. Nobody likes to think something might be their fault (I certainly don’t) and nobody wants to be the guy to tell someone that it’s their fault (I certainly don’t). But sometimes it is.
Fingering position and pressure are likely culprits. You want to be right behind the fret with a firm enough pressure to ensure good string-contact with the fret. If chords are buzzing, play the same notes individually—is the buzz still there? Sorry that I’m teaching grandmas to suck eggs here. However, if someone else can cleanly play your buzzing guitar, you might need to consider adjusting your technique or your expectations for your setup.
On to Hardware…
Of course, there are hardware problems that can cause fret buzz. A couple of the more common:
Hardware issues: High/Low Frets
For a guitar to play cleanly, each fret should be neither higher or lower than its neighbors. If a fret is high, playing notes behind it may cause the string to vibrate off that fret. If you’ve a low fret, then the fret directly in front of it is (relatively speaking) a high fret.
High or low frets can be caused by poor fret installation and leveling. It’s also possible for frets to loosen and to sneak up out of the fret board over time.
If your guitar buzzes in one or a few small areas but plays cleanly elsewhere, high or low frets may be the reason. For instance, if you’re playing each note up the board and all play cleanly until, say, 9th fret. The 10th has a little buzz and the 11th sounds awful but the 12th plays cleanly again. You might have a high 12th fret.
It’s not always so cut and dry as this, of course, and it can be useful to use a short ruler to try ‘rock’ across a few frets. You can buy a ‘fret rocker’ (which has a number of different-length sides to fit across differently spaced frets) from Stew Mac or eBay, or you can cut a 6″ steel rule into different lengths. If you span three frets and your tool ‘rocks’, one of those frets is higher or lower than its pals.
Hardware issues: Nut Slots
If you get a buzz when you play an open string, there’s a good chance the string slot in the nut is too low. It’s also possible the you need a little more relief or your first fret is too high. Odds are good it’s the nut, though.
Hardware Issues: Relief
Incorrectly set relief (the bow your neck pulls into under string tension) can lead to fret buzz.
At a high level, too much relief can be a cause of some buzz higher up the neck. Too little relief might cause some buzz all over if you don’t play lightly. A back-bowed neck will generally buzz in the lower positions and play more cleanly higher up.
This is all very general.
Hardware Issues: Humps and Bumps
The neck itself can sometimes be less than level. Humps and warps can happen. The result is that some sections are higher than their neighbors and that has to be addressed. A fret level or fingerboard level/re-fret is often the answer.
The bottom line
Potential hardware issues aside, a good setup for you may well be the result of some compromises. You might have to play with a lighter touch if you want a low action. Or, you might need to play a higher action to accommodate your style. You might need to live with some unamplified buzz.
Before you ask your repair person to lower your action, really, really think about it.
The most perfect, flawless, fret-job in the world will buzz if the setup isn’t right for the player’s style and technique. Be realistic about what’s right for you and don’t worry too much about unamplified buzz.
Or buy a harp.
Yes there is no question that resonance can be altered by the artistic finish.
But the science behind resonance is very clear. The player who wants a very clear signal or just enough distortion to roll sound back into the wood of the guitar for smooth feedback is all about that resonance.
But there is another factor I’ve learned before I launched this endeavor. And that is, nearly every guitars signal is mixed with a band, and usually there is enough amplification to get that guitar in the mix loud enough to hear it.
Add to that, nearly ANY amp modeling, toys on the floor (stomp boxes) and even amps with gain, all these signal boosters will drown out the nuances of true resonance. So, if you are on a bar stool, playing an acoustic, or if you are playing very clear and clean sound where the sound from the amp, is actually vibrating into the wood of the guitar, then a EddieA Rock Guitar may dampen the resonance you want to achieve. That being said, there is no reason not to assume 95% of rock and roll , metal or just plain high gain in some way, you will not only have a guitar that will turn heads by the artwork, but it will be dressed to kill in performance. Depending on the one you choose. Also see the pricing information to understand why they have the prices they do.
“For those about to Rock, We Salute you”