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Hello and happy new year to everyone!
I'm new to the forum and trying to setup an Epiphone LP.
I'm not a professional luthier though so I'm in doubt about what can be the cause of the problem.
Basically the problem is, when playing the notes one the high E, and only on that string, all is fine until the 19th fret.
Fret 19th and 20th make the same note as the 21th fret, than 21th and 22th sounds normally.
So what my mind suggest is that the cause is the height of the 21th fret. Probably it is to high and when pressing 19th or 20th the string actually make contact with the 21th, making a slightly buzzing 21th sound.
Am I right? Is this kind of problem usually resolved with fret leveling?

Please forgive my bad english

Hi Alessandro, Happy New Year to you and welcome to the OLF. Your English sounds quite good, by the way.

I am not a pro but here are my thoughts. Hopefully one of the pros will recover from New Years Eve and give you some pointers.

It is possible you may need the frets leveled and some fall-away added to the end of the fret board. However, before taking any drastic steps I would recommend that you first check out all of the components of your setup. I like to use a straight edge to see what the neck looks like - where it goes up and where it goes down, also look for any frets that are obviously too high. You can also use a short straight edge that will cover 3 or 4 frets to see if the 21st fret is just too high. Tap on the frets (in the middle and on each end) with a small piece of metal to make sure none of them are loose (a loose fret will sound different). Use the straight edge and also sight along the neck to check whether the fretboard is twisted or warped. On some guitars the higher frets over the body actually increase in height past the body join which could cause your problem. Once you are sure the neck is straight, frets are not loose, frets are level and there is sufficient fall-away (maybe 0.25 mm from the body join to the highest fret) then you can move to other components such as the nut height, relief, intonation, action height at the 12th fret, and saddle height.

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Based on what your saying it would make sense . You can check that with a fret rocker and see if it is high at that point . It may just need to be set a bit . There are tools available to let you gently set a fret at specific locations without fret leveling .

all this is based on my limited experience , I am not a pro . Maybe someone else will chime in here with better advice

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Some updates:

I've tried tap with metal test and they seems fine to me. The difference in sound is only between fret the are over the guitar body and the ones that are not, but I suppose this is normal...
To my sight the fretboard is very little twisted to the left, looking from the head to the body. But I can be wrong, it could be perfectly straight.
Now, the nut... ah well the nut... here are two pictures:


http://i.imgur.com/9UkjB7e.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/rkrexPB.jpg

The strings are completely sinked in to the neck, and the string installed here are Elixir - Heavy (.012-.052), normally I use more thin strings. Can this cause be the cause of the problem?

Tomorrow I'll straighten the neck and measure the frets heights.

Once you've fretted the note, the nut no longer has any bearing on the string.

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Measure the action at the 12th fret measuring from the bottom of the high and low e's to the top of the 12th fret crown. If the high e is at 4/64" or less and the instrument still sounds the same note as you described above the action is too low for the condition of the fret plane. This means as Steve said above that it needs a fret dress. If you raise the action on the high e to say 5/64th" or more and the problem goes away you have just verified that it needs a fret dress.

These Epiphone Les Pauls should be capable of action of 4/64th and 5/64th" with the high e being 4 and the low e being 5 and always measured at the 12th. Often though the fret work is so very poor that a percentage of these guitars can't do 4 and 5 respectively. The solution is a fret dress and checking for loose, spongy frets first and gluing and securing any loose frets.

Ok, as you said the last 3 frets where higher than the others...
I have leveled them, but now I should crown them.
I need a crowning file and I've seen the Stewmac files but unfortunately I'm in Europe so the shipping cost is high.
In Europe I've found Hosco crowning files. They come in 3 sizes:
1mm diameter
2mm
3mm
My frets are medium jumbo .106" x .036" (2,7x0,9mm) as said here http://www.epiphone.com/Products/Les-Paul/Les-Paul-Custom-Chrome.aspx.
Should I go with the large one?

I use one of the plastic sanding sticks with the small sanding belts available at hobby stores ans Stewmac.
It is slow, but works great for crowning. If you only have a few to crown, I would not pay lots of money for a specialized file.
I'd work on the nut as well. It looks like the high E string is buried in the nut.

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