So,this is my first post on any guitar forum ever. Bought myself a brand new olympic white standard the other day, she's beautiful in every way. she played beautiful in the baking hot shop, but soon as I got her home started rattling like an angry snake on the low E,A,d and G from the fifth back to the nut took her back and the very helpful guy kindly tweaked the truss rod and hey presto, seemed to be Ok all the way up to the dusty end, through a blues junior. All fine apart from a little rattle on the low E which i could just tweak on the saddle. Got her home and shes rattling again a bit now, and all notes are sounding a bit dead to my ears from the 14th up. Obviously in need of a proper set up from a pro but have some questions I would much appreciate someone to clear up. A) is a slightly dead sounding notes say on the G,B and E from the fourteenth up a necessary trade off for lovely low action up to the twelth. B) has anyone had simiar problems C) someone i know with significant experience said the nut looks high, so the action is very low to compensate, hence dead sonding notes and rattles, but the guy in the shop said Fender USA just arent gonna send out a strat with anything less than a perfect nut, any views on this? D) obviously one of the problems is temperature difference between my house and the shop, is this baby always gonna be so sensetive to temperature, cus I dont wanna be messing with the truss rod every time I take her somewhere. Please someone help!!

Hi Matt and welcome to the forum. New guitars might have spent weeks or months on the rack and been played by a lot of people, so the strings might be dead even if the guitar is new. You said that you have had your guitar only for a few days, so you're still in the debugging process. I'm not telling you what to do but here's what I would do with a new guitar regardless of the price, brand or specific model.
Put some new strings on it. Same gauge as the original.
Play with it for two weeks.
Write down anything that you think is not OK.
Don't rely on memory, take notes.
Take it back to the tech but prior to your visit, let him know that he'll need to listen to you and read your notes.
This way he might be tempted to offer you an appointment that better fits his schedule and thus spend more time on your guitar. He might even offer you to keep it at his shop for a few days to clear out any issues brought by the outside gig trips.
Guitar techs are our friends, but they can do a better job if they are well informed on our needs, not what they think that we need. Good luck.
Claude.

Through somewhat limited experience, I've learned Fenders are indeed usually REALLY good out of the box, but as previous posted, that doesn't mean humidity, temperature, old strings, test rides, etc. have not had an effect on playability variables that change.

Here's what I would do...

1)read the Fender setup guide
2)put on new strings
3)get some basic tools as noted, including the allen keys that came with the guitar
4)read the Fender setup guide again, and any associated info on the web if desired
5)adjust the set-up - i.e. truss rod for relief, tremolo and saddles for action, to the basic dimensions given
6)tweak till it plays the way you want.

It isn't all that hard, and is pretty fun too! After all, its YOUR guitar!

matt, all of the above. play the heck out of it every chance you get. if you aren't comfy with doing the set up yourself, take it to a good tech. a good tech will give you a couple weeks to see if it's workin' for you. they'll tweak it at no extra charge.
my new american special was great from the git-go but i took it in anyway as i've done with all my guitars. the tech made it even better.
good luck and enjoy.

If the frets are level and you play back from the last fret towards the headstock and dead notes get progressively worse then the action is probably too low.



Nut is only used when playing open strings to clear the first fret. Unless the person is a proper setup tech ignore what they say. Without measurements they aren't backing it up with anything.

The way to test "correct" nut height is to hold down each individual string at the 3rd fret. With you picking hand bounce the string on the first fret wire.
Use a feeler gauge between that fret and the string you should expect to see an approx .020" gap on the low E side and a .018 gap on the high E side.



If you have a really low action you will notice temp changes. The higher your action the less it will bother you.

Truss rod adjustments and new guitars have settle in time. If its just being tweaked all the time to "see how it goes" I suggest you buy a feeler gauge and a 6" rule in 64ths and start taking measurements of how the guitar is setup. Then you can definitively tell if its temp changes or play style or the setup causing strings to deaden or buzz.

A way to get a really low action on the upper register is get your frets leveled with a slight bit of fall away. This has the same effect that adjusting the truss rod does for the lower register but permanent.

Best to either start measuring or pay someone for a setup how you want and take it back till they get it right (or even better both). It is hard to take anything into context without knowing how low a low setup is or how far the string height is changing when the guitar is moved.

Cant thank you guys enough, lots of sound advice there and Im certainly gonna take it all on board. Luckily there's a lot of good Techs near me and I allready know what the issues are so Im gonna get her booked in. Its just slightly disconcerting as Ive waited for a US strat for a long time and she felt so right (played her for a long time before I bought) and at the mo, ive got guitars a quarter of the price that play better Anyway, this is the first one I will have a pro set up on as Ive always just dicked around with saddles myself and got the desired effect. But I want this one to be right from the start. Anyway, again cant thank you guys enough for you speedy responses, feels good to be part of the Fender community.

Matt, maybe if your amp went to 11 you would not be able to hear any string buzz.... Sorry I could help myself ,good luck, Mark

Hey Matt:

I understand your frustration. I just spent a fair amount of time adjusting the truss rod, measuring string height, doing bridge adjustmens etc. Had my Strat working perfectly the other day, then set the instrument aside for 2 days and tried to play it again today-the high e is dead all over the neck-why? It is laying on the fretboard frets! Now I seriously doubt that my cats readjusted the neck in the last 2 days. BUT the humidity has been really high and I do not have air conditioning. So instead of getting in some practice today in the 20 minutes I had before leaving for work, I had to readjust the truss rod to get the high e off the rails. Now of course the action is slightly high on the low e side. But at least I can play it when I get home or get time tomorrow.

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So heres to your survival, swimming up the stream, crossing over one dam after another till we get to Rock and Roll Heavens Gate!

What you have to remember is the neck is made of wood which will change from day to day and when you played it in the store it was acustomed to the temp of the store and now it has changed so the truss rod could be back off a bit and 9 times out of 10 that will fix the problem. in the summer I have to set my truss rod weekly. And of course the strings should be changed who knows when they were changed last in the store. Hope this helps.