Horrible 1st fret buzz on RG7621!! Help!

[Jupiter]

Hey guys!
The other guitarist in our band owns a black RG7621 fixed bridge 7 string. The guitar was set up extremely well from the day he bought it, but recently, for no apparent reason, the low B and low E buzz insanely badly on the 1st fret. It's so bad that it's hard to even tell what note they are! And it's only on the first fret. He restrung it, and there was no change... I was thinking a climate change could have maybe puckered the 1st fret closer to the strings, but it happened after the guitar had been doing nothing but resting inside of his climate-controlled house for a while. His house is never humid, overly dry, or cold. It's a little warm sometimes, but nothing at all unusual.
We have a gig coming up this friday, and he'd really like to have that guitar. Please help!

[nuno]

if it buzzes on the 1st fret only, this means that the 2nd fret has something wrong, i guess.
or maybe the 1st fret has some notches on the E and B strings, so that when you press those strings, they sink into these notches causing buzzes.

i'd bring it to a pro.

[Rich]

Sounds more like backbow, loosen the truss rod and see if it clears up.

[MicJustMic]

I'd have to agree with Rich, go to his site for very good instructions on setup.

Even sitting in a case, in even temp and humidity the guitar will change some as it ages.

We are talking about wood, it expands and shrinks even with small changes in climate. Even it it SEEMS like the room it's in is always the same . . .

Mic

[nuno]

i think a backbow would cause buzzing on more than 1 fret.

[MicJustMic]

Originally Posted by nuno

i think a backbow would cause buzzing on more than 1 fret.

I think Rich really means there is not enough relief, not that it's bowed back.

On my RG520 if the neck doesn't have just the right "dip" to it, it will ONLY buzz at the 5th fret on the low E string.

It's a slightly low fret on my guitar, the other frets are good, I'm just too lazy to pull that ONE fret, re-seat it a little higher, level it again, dress it, blah blah blah, when the difference between .35 and .45 MM neck relief fixes it. :-)

That and most necks don't curve smoothly. If you read Rich's step by step cleaning and setup pages, the guitar he used for the pics has a slight back-bow in the lower positions, even with proper relief measured at about fret 8 or 9, so he had to use a little more relief than he normally would to compensate.

Now, none if this is saying you're wrong, mind you, but it's much easier, and faster/cheaper, to check neck relief first, THEN if that's not a quick fix, look at the frets themselves. :-)

Mic

[Rich]

Originally Posted by nuno

i think a backbow would cause buzzing on more than 1 fret.

I just returned a VWH that was backbowed on 1 only. Horrid buzz at the second, only.

[sniperfrommars1]

My first guitar suffers from backbow and the first fret buzzes awful if the action isnt unplayable

[Rich]

You can pull that fret up and glue it up with superglue. It'll get it playable anyway.