Fret noise from acoustical guitar

Outside of just not doing it, what is the best way to eliminate fret noise from an acoustical guitar on an audio track?

I know there is a lowering the volume in the "Track Automation" using the Pencil Tool. But the exposed area were the fret noise is high pitched, seems pretty tough to remove without effecting the performance or orchestration, solo etc.

Any help would be appreciated and thanks for all the help in past posts!

G5 dual 2 gig, Mac OS X (10.4.10), Logic 8, Logic STudio

Posted on Oct 19, 2007 10:38 AM

Oct 23, 2007 7:34 AM in response to Jim Frazier

I go with Jim's first suggestion. Does it take longer? yes, but it is so efficient and works perfectly and leaves a natural feel to the guitar. I feel the problem with the de-esser is that you're effecting the frequency and that will change the sound and performance. By editing the audio file, you're really selecting perhaps 2 milliseconds of sound or so and notching it down by 10db. What happens there is that the squeak is there, but very low, and lends a natural sound to the guitar. I don't know of many good guitar performances where the squeak is not heard to some level. It's a real guitar after all played by a human, so there will be techniques the player uses which cause this.

Another trick I like to do to make it sound like it fits the song better is to also shift the squeak to make sure it's on beat in the song, so it becomes almost part of the rhythm of the song. Just like breaths for a singer, I deal with those in much the same way.

HTH
R