A lava emission started at Mt. Etna, Italy, on 7 September, 2004. Neither earthquake seismicity heralded or accompanied the opening of the fracture field from which the lava poured out, nor volcanic tremor changed in amplitude and frequency content at the onset of the effusive activity. To highlight long-term changes, we propose a method for the location of the tremor source based on a 3D grid search, using the amplitude decay of the seismic signal, from January to November 2004. We find the centroid of the tremor source within a zone close to and partially overlapped with the summit craters (pre-effusive phase), which extended up to 2 km south of them (effusive phase). The depths are of between 1698 and 2387 m a.s.l. We hypothesize the lava effusion stemmed from a degassed magma body, although we find evidence of temporary magma overpressure conditions, such as those documented on 25 September.