Strange harmonic at the 19th fret

[Kwesi]

I noticed that when I play the 19th fret of my A string I hear E but there's some other note in there too. The harder I pluck the less noticeable it is but normally when I'm that far down the neck I'm tapping and you can't really get any "meat" under your fingers when you tap so that harmonic sounds loud, clear and out of place.

Any ideas on what it could be? If it matters at all, my bass is strung with month old Ken Smith taper cores.

[longfinger]

Are you hearing an F a Major 7th below your tapped E?
When you tap, both sides of the string vibrate, tap to bridge and tap to nut. If not dampened fully, you may be hearing the string vibrating from your tap to the nut?

You can reverse this by fretting the F on the 8th fret and plucking the string in the space towards the nut.

This happens all the time when you tap, and you can hear it when you play without an amp. The pickups however, mostly pick up the proper string length vibrating, from tap to bridge.

Maybe this is what your hearing?

Maybe not if you're damping with the left hand. What note are you hearing?

[Kwesi]

The note i hear is somewhere between E that I play and Eb which is weird. The only problem with playing the E somewhere else on the fretboard is that 1) that makes it complicated 2) the voicing is all wrong (it being a whole octave below. I'll try damping more thoroughly with my left hand. Thinking back, that may be exactly it. Thanks for the suggestion.

One other quick question I was talking to a local tech that I go to occasionally and he says that he avoids taper core strings because he gets weird harmonics with them above the 15th fret on his A and D strings. could the strings themselves have anything to do with the issue? Thats actually why I posted in this forum instead of Basses.

[pringlw]

Originally Posted by Kwesi

The note i hear is somewhere between E that I play and Eb which is weird. The only problem with playing the E somewhere else on the fretboard is that 1) that makes it complicated 2) the voicing is all wrong (it being a whole octave below. I'll try damping more thoroughly with my left hand. Thinking back, that may be exactly it. Thanks for the suggestion.

One other quick question I was talking to a local tech that I go to occasionally and he says that he avoids taper core strings because he gets weird harmonics with them above the 15th fret on his A and D strings. could the strings themselves have anything to do with the issue? Thats actually why I posted in this forum instead of Basses.

I don't know about taper core stings generally. I can say that my harmonics seem a little too rich when I use Rotosound Swing bass. I love those strings for the "Geddy Lee" sound, but for harmonics I find them a little too hot (meaning, I get layers of harmonics that I don't necessarily want). Of course, when I use Rotos, I keep them brand new so that may have something to do with it as well.

[ryognbass]

its a shrill F an octave over the E on my charvel. you can get the same effect fingerstyle directly over and slightly past the 19th fret, so id say that its more an anomaly of the string rather than both sides of the string vibrating (although that is a cool effect to play with )

[EADG mx]

If you're having problems with the dead side of the string sounded (a common problem with tapping) I would look into using some sort of mute.