New Martin d28 B String Buzzes Tried evertything

[Charles]

Bought a 2008 Martin D-28 new from a shop going out of business.
It played fine at the shop.

After playing it for an Hour, lots of lead and string bending, B string sounds Dead. It doesnt "ring" but sounds thuddy.

Took it to a Authorized service, what a joke. He made a new bridge, charged me $150 and no dif. Started adjusting the Truss, no diference.

Light strings. Any Ideas b4 I ship it up to Penn?

[Charles]

Thanks to all who are helping me with this.

Today I took it to a 2nd Martin Authorized Service Shop. This person seems to know what he is doing. He hears what I am hearing.

I think He reset the Truss Rod. He put it in neutral and bounced the neck hard. After that, the truss rod seem to thread much better than before. It may not have been workink at all before. He is also going to level the frets. He is going to do it all under warentee.

I will let you all know the results. Might be a week or so.

I have new Hope!

Charles

[Charles]

I got the giotar back. MUCH BETTER.

The Truss Rod was cross threaded and incorectly Set, so it was always stuck in the neutral spot which had the neck WAY out of Specs. The New Shop (Atlantic Guitars in Annapolis Maryland) fixed that by resetting and adjusting the truss rod and planed and shaped the frets, checked the Nut Wow, Much better. I still hear a little noise, but i'm happy. Oh BTW, He did it all under warentee at no cost to me.

The first Authorized repair shop had NO ClUE WHAT HE WAS DOING! What a joke.

I still don't know how it made it out of the factory in this condition. Also I dont get how Martin has this first authorized shop working for them. Guess its not a perfect world. If I had it all to do over, I think I would buy a Gibson.

Thanks to all here, was a big help. Hope we all learned from it.

Charles

[Rob Mercure]

As I noted before - Gibson is generally a horror for field service personell to work with - my personal knowledge being from the electronics end. Why not do everyone a favor - especially Martin - and make sure that they are aware that of the poor quality of their "authorized" service shop. They used to be quite vigilent about jerking the authorization as it means a good bit of income and advertising for the service shop.

Rob

[Charles]

I told Martin In Penn about my experience with the first shop.
It is up to them now.

Thanks for the post

[Bob Gaddis]

There is an "Authorized Martin Repair" station near me. He is terribly inept and unqualified, IMO. He has messed up a number of Martins that have made their way to me for "re"-repair. He worked on a D-35 Brazilian last year. The guitar had languished under a bed in the case for 20-some years and the bridge and pickguard had both lifted. He peeled the pickguard, taking big chunks of the top with it. Then he glued it back with contact cement and the big voids where the spruce had been showed through as lumps and hollows. The bridge was not reglued correctly and it lifted no sooner than the owner got it home. The top was also over-sprayed in several small sections for some reason. The owner called me and I told him to call Martin. Bottom line: Martin factory replaced the top and bridge, leveled the fingerboard, re-fretted, corrected the neck set, refinished the guitar. It is essentially anew guitar. However the original value of a 1969 Brazilian is lost.

I get lots of nut/saddle jobs and fret jobs from his screw-ups. he has no clue how to do these things.

I have written Martin. A Martin dealer friend and another Martin repairman have complained about this guy's work . Martin seems to think all is well and they told us to stop complaining,as if we have some personal agenda. It's good for me that he stays in business,because I get paid by his former customers to fix his mistakes. it's bad for Martin and bad for the customers and bad for their guitars.

[Joe Sanders]

I was reading something a while back about the two bare strings buzzing, and the Taylor specs article said if you wound the bare strings about 5-6 winds away (down) from the string post hole (or whatever the correct technical name for it is) this prevents string breakage. The theory is if the string is sitting right over the hole, it can cut into the string when you tighten the tuner key. I've discovered that it also helps cut down on buzz. I usu. put 5-6 wraps on both bare strings. I suppose you can wind the string down too close to the bottom and that might cause problems as well. I've also had buzzs from the saddle being too high and or from the saddle having the wrong angle where the compensated B string went over the saddle top. I must have made about 25 or 30 saddles before I figured out the right way to do it.

[Brent Hutto]

Oops.

[Tim Mace]

I don't think that buzz is going to go away unless you get another gtr.or build a better one!