[tomg123]

Well I had my electric acoustic in the shop (ibanez) changed the
strings and had the nut adjusted. Now the 3 treble strings are
barely audible, and have a long sustaining distant sound. The 3
bass strings are fine. It has to be the guitar cause i have the
same problem whether its hooked up to the computer or amp, or
mixer. I hope the guy didn't mess it up, he seems to know his stuff
and playing a long time. He also stretched the strings, he said it
help it stay in tune.....help

[allthumbs]

Take it back to the shop and make them fix it. They should be happy to do that for you.

[tomg123]

I told him the action was high AT....he only charged me for the
string change. I only noticed this plugged in, so in the store its
seemed ok. I shoundn't have brought it there, don't know if i
want them messing with it again. Anyway your right thats what
i probably should do. This guys been cool with me in the past, but
always seemed a bit reckless. He told me the neck was a bit warped
maybe he adjusted that too

[Noodler]

I'm with allthumbs in that the shop should fix it. But I also understand that you don't want them stuffing it up again.

Out of curiosity, are the pickups closer to the strings on the bass side, even, or closer on the treble side?

Does turning your tone pots change much (eg if you turn treble to max, does it still sound weak?) What happens if you select different pickups?

[flannr]

If it's only the high 2 or 3 strings that are causing this problem (as you indicate) then you have an electronic problem either in the pickup itself, or in the tone pot. Without seeing the electronics myself, I can't say for sure. Before you do anything else, open up the electronics cavity (don't remove any electronics) and see if you can find the problem by eye; for example, one of the pots may have a wire soldered to the back of it - this occasionally pops off. That would account for your symptoms. Are any wires hanging in space? Also you may see a capacitor in there that should be connecting the two pots which may have come loose.

With regard to the other things you mentioned: warped neck and string stretching...

You should learn how to adjust your own truss rod if you are mechanically minded. It's not difficult. You should also learn to check the neck for straightness yourself. There are two ways to do this: one is with a straight-edge lying on the fretboard. It should touch the top of every fret. If only one fret is too high or too low, that fret needs to be adjusted. if a group are too high or too low, the neck is bent, and that needs to be adjusted. The other way to check it is to hold the guitar up to your face with the neck pointing away from you and sight down the neck. Compare the straightness of the neck as it appears under the low E and under the high E. This will not only show you a warp up or down, but a sidways bend or a twist as well. Whenever you buy a guitar you should do this. If it aint straight, walk away...

As for stretching the strings; there are two schools of thought here - the one you heard, which is true, and the other one (which is of course, my opinion) on which I will now expound. Strings have to stretch, and a new string will not stay in tune until it has stretched out. If you play professionally, and you're about to perform with new strings, you don't have time to let this happen naturally, so you put your finger under the string as close to the neck as possible and pull it away from the guitar to stretch it. Now it will probably play in tune. So what's wrong with this? Here's an illustration - when you want to blow up a long skinny balloon to make a balloon animal you have blow really hard, but if you do it that way the rubber on the balloon stretches in a pretty uniform manner. The easy way is to stretch the balloon with your hands before you try to blow it up, but if you do that you will see that the rubber doesn't stretch uniformly, it has thick and thin spots. Stretching a guitar string rapidly does the same thing; thick and thin spots. This has two side effects which you may or may not notice: one is that the string will not sound the same at every fret. The other is that the string will have a greater propensity to break. So there's a trade off, which a professional musician may be willing to make, but an amateur may not want. When I string an instrument, I always change all of the strings, and since I've given up my professional status I let them stretch slowly by just tuning up over and over until it all settles in.

If you are having trouble with keeping your strings in tune, you may have another problem though. Actually, there are a lot of things that could be wrong - nut height, bridge position, age of the strings, the way they are attatched to the machines, the way they are attatched to the bridge or harp or whatever anchors the other end, the flex of the neck, the way you put your fingers down, etc. Sometimes you have to find a good guitar mechanic to take a look at all of these things to determine what's up. As a side note, you may not know this but a guitar is never actually in tune - but that's a whole other topic.

[Stratrat]

Try the easiest thing first - adjust your pickup height. Raise the treble side and/or lower the bass side, experiment with the settings a bit and see if that helps.

[tomg123]

Thanks guys, flannr that was quite an education and i am new
to electric acoustic and guitar (3 years) I'm guessing the pick-up
is in the volume, bass, treble controls? i see nothing else. I did as
strat and noodler suggest and it helped but only if the bass all down
and treble all up. I did not have this problem with the old strings
or before the nut was adjusted. I used a different gauge to
(12 to 11)

[flannr]

It sounds like this is an acoustic guitar with an invisible pickup as opposed to a solid body electric. Is that right?

If so the electronics are not going to be easy to check out.

This is kind of odd, just changing strings on this kind of guitar shouldn't have had any effect at all on the sound. Here's one possibility (but I'm just guessing based on very little information) It may be that the pickup is under the saddle and the guy changed all of your strings at the same time. (now I'm making stuff up) When he had all the strings off, the saddle moved and the acoustic pickup is no longer making a solid contact. At any rate, you've got to go back to the guy who did this to you and tell him very pleasantly that whatever he did to your guitar has created a new problem. Could he please fix it? Ask him if the pickup is under the saddle, and could that be the problem. He will have to change your strings again to fix this, and you shouldn't be charged for this, but they don't cost that much in any case.

If you get any grief tell him you are going to write a letter to the local better business bureau. Go somehere else and buy new strings (Excelsior) and change them yourself. Make sure the saddle is not loose. If it is, take it out and look at the bridge; is it clean? Is there a strip of metal in there? is it sitting flat and straight? If there looks to be a problem, again you might want to look for another mechanic to set everything right. If it looks good, blow out any dirt or anything that might be in there. Put the saddle back in as straight and tight as possible using only your fingers. String it starting with the high E and working your way to the low side. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

[tomg123]

The saddle doesn't seem to look different or feel loose.
He was trying to lower the action and it didn't sound right
so he brought it up a little again. This was done by him
loosing the little screws on the triangle thing over the nut,
and lifting it up with a tool of some kind. I will bring it back
tuesday next week and let ya know how it turns out...thanks much

[flannr]

Where in NJ?

[tomg123]

In long branch area....

[flannr]

I live in Oceanport. Did you take your guitar to Monmouth music?

[tomg123]

Sorry for the long response time had to work. Wow thats close
by. I took it to jacks music a stones throw away. I bought a
seagul acoustic there. The one i'm having a problem with i bought
at bayshore music in middletown. The more i ponder this the more i think your right about the electronics, it doesn't make sense that
a bad setup would make the treble strings not sound off......

[tomg123]

BTW, i should have done this in the first post.
Heres a sample of what i'm talkin bout. I hit all strings
equal (same volume) the last 3 are distant and sustained
with less volume

[737blues]

That's interesting. Sounds like the G string is actually muted, whilst the B and E are just attenuated in volume. Does this problem only occurs when the guitar is amplified? If not, then I'm suspecting the nut has not been properly re-seated.