I have a 60th Anniversary Strat.
The harmonics sound beautiful on the 12 and 7th frets, but very, very faint on the 5th fret.
Any idea what is causing that?
I tried going slightly above and below the fret, with no luck.

Thanks.
Louie

That is strange as they should really ring out over the 5th fret. How low is your action, is it almost touching the frets.

How old are your strings. Coupled with Straycats suggestion of stringheight. Low stringheight and high pickups can cause plenty of harmoic content to dissapear.

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No no and no

When plugged in, the same happens with mine in the neck pickup position. Nothing wrong with middle and bridge pickups. BTW: Highway one first series for me.

Thats an eq thing. Either not enough treble or mids in your sound. You only want a touch more of either. The softer sound of the neck pickup is causing the problem, cos its ok on the other two. How is it on the neck/middle combination?

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No no and no

I thought the same exact thing.

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

On the neck-middle position it works, even though there is a slight reduction of volume. I tried lowering and raising pickup but with no result.

Try more treble and middle on your amps eq.

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No no and no

EQ is the answer here I agree.

Flick your p/up selector to the bridge only position and try again. That pickup has the highest treble content so if you can't get a working 5th fret harmonic with that, you've got a problem.

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

Got to be a fret issue. I have tried all the suggestion, and then some.
Off to the repair center.

Will let you know.
Thanks for your input.

It cant be a fret issue because you dont fret the note to get a harmonic. The fret itself doesnt come into play.

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No no and no

I made a set of Lipstick pickups that had the same problem. Using the neck pickup gave almost no harmonic. I found that pure nickel strings is one issue that will kill harmonic content. The other issue I found is the pickup output was a little low and possibly had some winding anomalies. After rewinding the pickup to a higher DC resistance the problem disappeared. IMHO I suggest swapping out the pickup for any other standard strat style single coil pup and see what happens. You might check the tone controls on the guitar as well. The strat is typically wired with two tone pots the share one cap and only affect the neck and middle pickups and not on the bridge. Kinda silly with how honky the bridge pup alone can be? With 250k pots you get a lot of treble loss in the neck and middle even with tone all the way to treble. 500k tone pots help. Try desoldering the tone cap also. If you find the tone cap to be the issue I suggest a .05uf. It wont kill the highs to mud, it just smooths things out.

psy

Harmonics are not purely based on wher your fingers on the left hand touches the string over the frets. Its also based on where you pick the string. you need to consider two things:

Harmonics are based every octave.
the distance between octaves gets shorter the closer you get to the bridge.

so, based on this, if you touch the string over the 5th fret, if you pluck over the 19th fret, you should have an easier time getting a harmonic. likewise, if you find the point that is an octave further again than the 15 fret you will get a real good harmonic.

This point is usually between the neck pickup and middle pickup.

To find the point, just touch the string over the 5th fret, and try picking the string at a number of points between the neck pickup and the bridge pickup. you will find the sweet spot that gives you the harmonic.

My guitar teacher showed me this and its helped me no end.

Hey guys,

I actually read that this is because of the pickup location. If you change pickups you get harmonics because the neck PUP is located on a node in the sound wave or something.

Cheers.

disagree. i have no problems getting nice harmonics on any location
of my pups on any of my guitars. i say its a combo of strings and EQ issues, maybe even user error.

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63supro
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