Persistent buzzing, even after careful truss rod adjustment and bridge setup, can drive you crazy and completely ruin your experience with a guitar.
The more expensive the guitar, the more upsetting it can be!
Where is the buzzing coming from? It can be very hard to tell for sure.
Here is the story of how I eliminated the BUZZ from my PRS 594 Hollowbody II -
I recently bought this guitar online, actually the most expensive guitar I've ever purchased. Though it was beautiful, carefully shipped, undamaged, priced within my budget (barely!), and arrived safely (whew!), there was one ruinous problem: BUZZ .
I can imagine that this was why the seller sold it. I almost turned around and sold it myself. For my purposes, the buzzing made the guitar unplayable. I felt terrible about the money I'd spent. I had taken a chance with eyes open, and this time the outcome was a disaster, or so it seemed.
I let the guitar acclimate, I tweaked the truss rod and the bridge setup to seeming perfection, yet still the BUZZ remained and I could not pin down the cause. The pickup area seemed possibly implicated, but using the ole "finger on the PU" or "cardboard jammed in PU" seemed to only slightly affect the BUZZ but not eliminate it.
Since all my efforts to determine the cause for sure were unsuccessful, I reasoned that my only hope was to take remedial action on faith. So I did.
Here is where serendipity enters the story.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I happened to have here in the house a sheet of very thin rubber that I had purchased for the purpose of making a DIY mask brace. (
https://www.fixthemask.com/products/v2-diy-rubber-sheet-brace ) This was approximately the right thickness for wedging between the PUs and the PU frames, and I reasoned that this rubber would be a superior vibration absorber as compared to the typical wedged piece of cardboard, which sometimes works but did not in this case.
Since the rubber is somewhat floppy, it was not possible to simply insert it by pushing it into the narrow slot between a PU and its frame. The only way to do it was to disassemble the PUs from the face of the guitar, after which, with access to both the front and rear sides, it was possible to slightly widen the opening(s) with finger pressure and insert the (cut to size) rubber.
My goal was to insert as much rubber as I could, which turned out to be one long piece and one short piece (on each PU) along the top and bottom of the PUs. It was not possible to insert rubber on the sides as they were just too tight, though I did manage to insert one very thin piece of cardboard to augment the rubber.
I also decided to put small pieces of rubber between the bridge and the bridge adjustment discs. This covered all the spots that I thought might be relevant to mitigate while the strings were removed. If I needed to move on to work on knobs and controls I would be able to do that later even after re-stringing the guitar. As it happened, this was not necessary, because INSTALLING THE RUBBER ON PICKUPS AND BRIDGE FULLY SOLVED THE PROBLEM.
My relief was profound, and with the buzzing gone, the 594 is a WONDERFUL guitar, with really beautiful tone and projection (IMO) when played unplugged (which is the start of everything!) . Of course, it sounds gorgeous now plugged-in as well.
This is the rubber I used:
Multipurpose Neoprene Rubber Sheet with Certificate, 12" x 24", 1/32" Thick, 40A Durometer
You might want thinner or thicker, or even to have several thicknesses available before you start your job.
I hope this story helps someone else turn a source of desperate despair into a source of profound satisfaction.
Peace and Music,
- Steve
P.S. I can add a link to pictures once I get the privs to do so here!
