need guitar help

musanman

My guitar strings are almost all rattling somewhere along the fretboard. I've been playing a lot of songs around the 7th and 9th frets across the board and almost all my strings are making noise.

I've tried raising the strings a bit from the bridge but it doesn't seem to be helping. I have a MIM fender strat, and I'm really thinking about taking it in to have them look at it.

Would higher gauge strings help? I have 9s on there now and I'm wondering if it's just because they're so light.

Suggestions?

ddahcmai

Have you recently changed your strings? Also, have you tried any truss rod adjustment? If you have recently changed your strings, keep in mind that you should only change one at a time, otherwise the lack of tension on the neck will cause it to bend backwards a bit more than normal and never really go back to the same place without adjusting the truss rod. Also stretch out the strings as you put them on, they loosen very fast if they're brand new and will detune and begin to rattle. One more thing is that excessive use of a whammy bar or bending the strings can also cause them to lose some tension and rattle. Hopefully that helps, I've gotta go to bed and won't be able to give any more feedback for a while.

stigweard

Take a metal straight edge and place it across the frets. If you can rock it at any point, or if you can see a discrepancy of height when looking at the side (relative to the curve of the neck), then you have a raised or just too high fret. If it is raised you will be able to see a gap between the base of the fret and the fretboard. Chances are it will feel sharp on one or both edges along the side of the fretboard as well. If you have one or more raised frets, you need to get some fretwork done. It will cost anywhere from 50-200$ depending on where you get it done, how many there are, and what their hourly rate is.

If there are no raised frets (I suspect there are given where the buzz is starting), you can try raising the action, or adjusting the truss rod. If you do, only make 1/8th turns and let it rest for an hour or more to settle before making another. In the end it will take another day or three to finish settling so less is better. IIRC, the proper action on a strat is 2mm at the 17th fret.

edit: Other possibilities are string life, as mentioned, and poor strumming / picking technique. Heavier gauge strings will cause much more tension and change the shape of the neck, so they could appear to be fixing the problem, when they are really doing the same thing as adjusting the truss rod. Thicker strings do have fuller tone though. Lastly, can you hear the buzz through your amp? If you can't it isn't worth worrying about. My epi LP buzzes all over the place acoustically, but I haven't ever been plugged into an amp that can pick it up.