I recently took my 2–3-year-old OM2A (the best sounding guitar I've ever played or heard) in to a local guitar repair shop for some tweaking. Nothing had been done to it since I bought it new, and it seemed to gotten just a bit "stiff," so I thought it was time for some minor adjustment. I requested that the action be lowered just a tiny bit and that it be given it a once over to check for neck relief, etc. When I got it back, it felt great, but there was a noticible dead note on the G, 5th string, 10th fret. The pitch is still there, but, to quote the repair person, "it sounds like all the life has been sucked out of it." No sustain; no bell-like ring. I have fairly sensitive ears, so I don't believe it was there prior to being worked on (after two or more years, I would have noticed it by now!). Not only that, but the two or three frets below this were somewhat dead (becoming gradually less so as you descend toward the 5th or 6th fret). The repair person is at a loss. He tried resurfacing the saddle and raising the action a smidge, which helped somewhat, but did not cure the problem.

Now, I know from previous posts that all guitars are supposed to have dead spots, particularly in this location and at this pitch level, but this seems to be the direct result of the minor adjustments performed. Should I just accept this as the way things are, or seek out another repair person? I have no reason to suspect this person is not competent; on the contrary, I think he knows his stuff very well. Any suggestions?

David Bishop

I've had similar problems with bad sets of strings. Replacing them made the dead spots go away. It might not be the most likely cause, but it's something to consider.

High frets on the thicker strings are a tough spot for a lot of guitars. The problem could have been there to some degree before and you just did not zero in on it. But assuming this is not the case and that you have eliminated the more obvious things such as a bad string I would wonder about the crown on the frets. Was any work done on the frets? As an experiment you could lay a nail on the fretboard in that area and play off that. If you get more sustain with that I would examine the fret crowns.

Thanks, folks, for your comments. I have a new set of strings ready to be installed. The strings on the guitar now are fairly new, but I guess that doesn't necessarily mean they're a good set.

The G notes always seem to be the deader notes on the guitars I've owned. Sometimes the open G is kind of dull when the guitar is new. The G on the 6th string 3rd fret can be problematic too. The G on the 5th string 10th fret is the deadest on my new OM1A, but it rings enough for what I do up there.

An interesting thing happened this weekend. I was playing one of my electric guitars and was playing around with my Vox valvetronix and my Fender Blues Jr connected in parallel. I was cranking them pretty loud and playing some lead along with a song on the cd player. My acoustic guitars were all hanging on the wall in my guitar room. When I hit that G on the 5th string at the 10th fret I thought the OM1A was going to freaking jump off the wall. Man, it started ringing like you wouldn't believe. It would do it some at the 6th string 3rd fret G and a little on the open G, but not nearly like at the 5th string 10th fret G. I finally isolated it to the Blues Jr. That little amp is really bassy and it was rattling the walls pretty good and I guess it just hit that resonate freq just right. Interesting thing was my Huss and Dalton DS and my Collings D2HA were hanging right beside the OM1A and they didn't seem to ring out nearly as much. Neither of them seem as dull on the 5th string 10th fret G as the OM1A does either. It was pretty wild to say the least.