Buzz buzz buzz...arrghhh! Blame the 5?

[mikarre]

I used to play with a pick many year ago in a metal band. Then, for a few years I was playing fingerstyle mostly. Now that I am gonna be in a metal thing again I've been going back to the pick and trying to recapture the tone I had then.

I pick aggressively, but for the songs I play it requires it. I KNOW I picked aggressively in my old band and back then I was very happy with my sound. Now, all I get is buzz buzz buzz. Practicing on my own tonight I was working on an Iron Maiden song requiring some hard galloping type picking, and the only way I would get a decently clean sound was to pick very lightly, losing the whole vibe of the song. I had the bass set up a little while back, so I dont know if that could be anything.

Here's what I'm wondering though: Back then I played a 4 string. Now I play a 5. I'm kinda new to the 5. This might be a silly question, but do 5 strings basses have a different tension to them than 4s, even the regular strings? In other words, obviously the low B is pretty floppy, but will the other strings still have a different type of action than a regular 4?

The last resort right now is to set my action way higher than I really want to in order to avoid this buzzing.

[PasdaBeer]

in lower tuning i have the same problem, only way i got around it was setting action high ( which i do normaly ) or thicker guage strings and picking more near the bridge

[Fuzzbass]

Blame the 5, but not because it's a 5. The problem is probably poor setup. It might need adjustment of the trussrod or bridge, or maybe some fretwork.

[jenderfazz]

When playing pick-style you usually want to avoid that buzz, and so higher action is better. Try raising your strings a little till you egt the sound you desire.

[mikarre]

Okay, I rasied my strings quite a bit and it did improve my sound. I wanted to do this before messing with the truss rod. The buzzing is almost gone, but the only problem now is that my action on the higher frets is terrible. I guess that's the trade off. But at least I can dig in with the pick without all that horrible noise.

[jenderfazz]

Well ideally the difference between the first and last frets shouldn't be TOO great. If it varies greatly then you should straighten the truss rod a little, your neck probably has a bit of a forward bow. But yeah, high action tends to affect the last fret string height more than the first few frets, so that is the tradeoff.

[HeavyDuty]

Moved to Setup...