First off, I am still pretty much in the learning stage with my guitars so please bear with me if I seem not to know much.

The MIM Standard Stratocaster that I bought several months ago has always buzzed on the low E and the A strings some. Saturday, I took it to a local shop and the tech there told me that three of my frets were high and that he could do a fret level and setup for $100. When I got the guitar home I noticed that it still buzzed a lot. That is until I turned up the volume on the amplifier. I usually keep the VOX AD50VT amp at about 1.5 to 2. At that setting, my Stratocaster buzzes a lot but my Les Paul is rock solid.

I was just about to take the guitar back to the tech when I decided to try again but with more volume. At about 3.5 or so, the buzzing appears to have disappeared. Is this normal for a stratocaster to buzz at low volume or does it still need work done?

Ok whats happening is your hearing the string buzz from the guitar when the amplifier is on low volume. You turn the amp up and it drownds out the buzz.

In truth you should take the guitar back to the tech and tell him your not happy with his work. He's charged you $100 to NOT rectify the problem.

You could probably get away with just raising the E&A strings a bit. Thats likely all the tech/hack will do. Try lowering the bass side of the neck pickup a turn too, before you adjust string height

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No no and no

Offhand, I'd opine that you have an incorrectly-slotted nut.

A full neck-off level/crown/polish job should've rectified the buzzing issue if indeed you had some high frets (which you may very well have had). That the buzzing persists tells me something else is amiss.

HTH

Arjay

I just spoke with the tech. He agreed with you that it is just a matter of raising the E&A a bit and that I should bring it back in and he will correct it.

I'd find another tech if I were you. A set up should include setting string height. If the E & A are the correct height and still buzzing, then something else is definitely wrong. The fact that he didn't catch something like this the first time tells me his skills are questionable at best.

I don't think that I will be going back there anyway. Although he did correct the problem, his continuos racist jokes really disturbed me. I don't know if he is like that with everyone, or if it was directed towards me in particular, but I don't associate with bigoted people.

I guess your so call Tech has never heard of a set of radius guauges that any tech should have and would have checked first.Then went to the string heights and on to the saddle heights , and then the nut and pickup heights. He for sure would be giving me a refund back and order youself a guitar setup kit from Stew-Mac and do your own setups, if you are going to play you need to know the basics like your setup anyway. If you can play you can learn how to do that and pocket the $100 bucks.Thanks

rebelbluesman:

I just bought a 3 DVD tutorial on performing Guitar Setups so that I can start doing them myself. They cover performing a setup on an acoustic, and Les Paul and Strat type guitars. It doesn't cover fret leveling though and I am not sure that I would want to try that at this stage. I suspected ahead of time that I had a couple of high frets, so there was no surprise when he told me that. That Stew-Mac site is interesting. Thanks for the input....

Let me take the other side of the coin here for a second. With metal against metal (strings against frets) you're going to have some buzzing going on. It's impossible to have zero buzz. As long as you can't hear it through the amp you're good to go. Now, there is a slight possibility that you are picking the strings harder when you don't have the amp on, which in turn will make the buzz much more noticeable.

I'm not saying the tech probably did a good job or that he's a hack. Just giving the possible other side of this situation. Glad you got it worked out.
MULLY