Electric guitar is making a vibrating noise on hammer on

Question

About 3 months ago I bought an Ibanez RG652FX. A few days ago I noticed a weird vibrating sound when I played a hammer-on on a G string. It is most noticeable when playing 9th to 11th fret hammer-on but it also happens on other adjacent frets in that area and I can hear it to some extent on D and B string as well. It also happens when sliding. It happens when playing distorted and it is not noticeable when playing clean.

At first, I thought that the pickups were too high so I lowered them as much as possible but there was no difference. I replaced the strings but the effect remains.

Then I noticed that the effect goes away if I mute the lower strings (E, A and D when playing G).

Here is the recording of a hammer-on G string 9th to 11th:

And here is the same while muting the lower strings:

It seems like playing certain notes is causing some strings to resonate. I haven't played guitar for a few years so I'm not sure if this is normal behavior. I don't remember having this issue with other guitars I played.

Is this a normal behavior and I just need to always mute other strings to prevent it or could this be an issue with the setup?

Answer 1

You play an E note hammering to F♯. When you play E on the G string, it makes the low E string vibrate in sympathy. That continues to vibrate and while the F♯ is sounding, it sets up beats with that low E, which actually is vibrating at its harmonic. The sound you hear is the result of the two vibrations simultaneously.

By muting the lower strings, you stop that happening. and it's only likely to happen when the low E and the A are unmuted. The A may well be vibrating sympathetically, again with one of its harmonics. The D string should make no difference either way.

Distortion, or overdrive tends to accentuate harmonics, so that's why guitarists tend to learn how to mute unplayed strings when using overdriven sounds.