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Stopping buzz on an Ibanez GA5TCE

I recently bought an Ibanez GA5GCE and absolutely adore it. It's as if Ibanez put everything I like about my RG570 into a classical acoustic guitar. Thin neck, low action, easy high fret access, slim body, perfect! My only gripe was that the cable connecting the electronics inside was loose, which caused a rattle when moving the guitar around and an annoying buzz on certain notes. I googled and found other people having similar issues with different guitars. Their fix was to remove the strings, put your hand inside the guitar and reroute the cable in a position that wouldn't move. I tried this but couldn't fit my hand inside as the body is so small and thin and I have quite large hands. In the end I fixed the problem by removing the electronic control panel and tightening the wire as described below.

Unscrew the four screws that hold the panel in place. It comes out easily as shown.


Inside the guitar you can see that the offending cable is the one connecting the jack socket to the control panel. I tightened this a bit so that it can no longer hit the body and cause the buzz, but not so tight that it could damage the connection to the socket. This is effectively just making the loop shown in the foreground of the image slightly larger. Add a bit of electrical tape to ensure that it does not come undone and that's it! Put the panel back and it's done.


A very simple fix, no need to remove or loosen the strings and there is now no buzz or rattle. I hope this proves useful to others.

Ciao, happy new year and all that.


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