Practicing on Tuesday Night I noticed and awful buzz on my steel string guitar. It was worst on the G string. From about the fourth fret to the seventh an awful twang had developed. I had noticed it getting worse, but it had really gotten bad over the last week. Sounded a bit like my guitar was morphing into a strange ethnic instrument with a buzzing drone. I tried a few solutions myself on Tuesday night to no avail, so a called Bob Altman to see about an emergency repair session. Luckily, Bob had time on Wednesday so we stopped by on our way out of town.

Bob noticed right away that the the neck had moved a bit and we tried to locate the source of the buzz. It was hard to pin down sometimes seeming to come from the neck and sometimes under the bridge. After some trial an error and removing some electronics from the guitar it became apparent that it was in fact the neck. Some fret work was in order A full re-fretting and planing of the neck would have been the best, but that would have taken a couple of days. Instead, Bob found the offending section and filed the frets there. After a few shots at it and about three hours later, the problem started to clear up.

Bob has also been building a new guitar for me and I got to see some of the progress. I am really excited about the new one. It will be a parlor size, with a classical width neck, same as the current model. The neck will be slightly thinner and the headstock will be shaped a little different too. The last guitar that he built for my friend, Mason, turned out great. Probably his best yet. Can't wait to hear the mine once it's finished.

Tonight we're playing in Black Mountain, NC near Asheville. After lunch and a warm up we'll hit the road.