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I know this may sound silly, because it's pretty much impossible to play these frets on a 14 fret acoustic guitar, but it's more of a piece of mind. I recently built an OM and everything is great, I really like the way it plays, except if I fret the high E string on the 17th fret I get a super high pitch or a dead fret plunk, and sometimes this happens on the 18th and the 19th too. No other strings, they all play in proper pitch all the way up the neck. I have filed them and really checked to see where they could be making contact and I got it a little better but the 17th -18th still gives me issues. Any ideas what that could be? I don't really want to pull a fret out over it, and I may be willing to just leave it at that but as I said it's more of a piece of mind, perfectionist kind of thing!

Just for curiosity sake, what is the e' string clearance at the 12th fret? And at the 17th or 18th fret?

High E at 12th fret was a tad above 4/64th pushing 5/64th. Not sure on 17th and 18th, I will check and get back, thanks!

as you go up the neck the angle of attack becomes more acute but this pulls the string over the saddle.
My guess is that your saddle is more the issue , so if you have fret clearance look at the saddle and how that is radiused. You may have a flat area that may be your issue

tippie53 wrote:as you go up the neck the angle of attack becomes more acute but this pulls the string over the saddle.
My guess is that your saddle is more the issue , so if you have fret clearance look at the saddle and how that is radiused. You may have a flat area that may be your issue

Thank you, I was wondering if this is the case because nothing else seems to be the cause of the issue. I'll look into the saddle area and see if I can determine anything.

There is a possibility that your 17th is a tiny bit high or you have a very slight rise at 17 and beyond, on the treble side. I would mark the 17th on up with a black sharpie, then level one more time with the sanding beam, rather than just dealing with single frets. If the problem continues, look at the saddle.

The high area can be very easy to miss in this area.

Diane Kauffmds wrote:There is a possibility that your 17th is a tiny bit high or you have a very slight rise at 17 and beyond, on the treble side. I would mark the 17th on up with a black sharpie, then level one more time with the sanding beam, rather than just dealing with single frets. If the problem continues, look at the saddle.

The high area can be very easy to miss in this area.

Okay, thanks... I'm going to look it over again..

So after today, after settling in, I no longer get a dead note, it is now specifically playing a note that is several steps higher in pitch than what it should be. The note rings out fine, plays fine, just at an improper pitch on this particular fret only (and this particular string only). No other note on the guitar is off, everything is perfect.. except for one fret (17th), on the high E string only. If there were other notes off I could see it being an intonation issue, but there are not. What could this be?

This might be a good topic for a Zoom meeting. :-) It's not unusual for high register frets to intone slightly sharp especially in higher action set ups, but to go steps higher defies laws of physics. The 18th, 19th or 20th fret could be the culprit.

Actually someone on AGF just told me that it more than likely matches the pitch of one of the 18th-20th fret (I'm not home right now to check but almost positive it is ringing at the same pitch as one of them), so therefore, whichever one it matches, that means it's actually fretting out on that one, so then I'll address the issue from there. I hope that works!