Fretting woes

For some years now I've been playing on this beautiful old Gibson that had been rescued from the attic in Larchmont. Not sure if it was originally George's or Beth's. I had never changed the strings because I'm ridiculously lazy about some things. Eventually I decided the thing to do was to take it in to the shop in Carrboro (Twin House Music) to have them not just change the strings but give it whatever forms of TLC it needed.

When I went to pick it up they were super-enthusiastic about it, telling me it was a 1966 Gibson something-something and that it might be worth $3500-$4000. Being well-schooled practitioners of the art of sales, they suggested that a guitar that valuable should really have a higher-quality case than my flimsy one.

I was very happy when I got it home and started strumming and picking, except... when I was finger-picking on the B string, something I do a lot of, as do most people who finger pick, I started hearing a fair amount of feedback. WTF? I thought. It's an acoustic guitar. What's with all this buzzing?

At length I decided to take it back up to the store to ask what was going on. One of the repair guys asked to check it out and then played his way up and down all the frets much more dexterously than I typically do. "Sounds OK to me." He said. "Show me what's happening when you play."

Somewhat sheepishly, since I never play in front of people, I picked it up and started playing and showing them what was happening. "Well that's just because you're putting your finger right on top of the fret. You've got to slide it back a ways to get a cleaner sound" he scoffed. User error, apparently. The other guy said much less judgmentally he really couldn't hear much buzzing. So I replaced the guitar in its case and slunk off to have lunch with Greg Bell.

Back at home, am producing feedback even when finger is further back from fret. Maybe the issue is the way my right hand is picking and/or I have have my head too close to the guitar in my Quasimodo playing posture. Really I need to see if I can reproduce the error on another guitar.

In any case, I need to get a harmonica and one of those things that holds it in front of your face like Dylan had so I can to two parts of songs. In the privacy of my own room.