Buzz on a fretless

[BigBadJohnny]

Hello there.

My bass has a smooth sound and great feel on it's black fretless scale, the sound is warm as you'd expect from a curbow, but slapping does tend to make my E string hit the neck a bit too hard, same doesn't happen on the other strings (everything pretty standard flatwound gauge). Other than that it seems ok, and i don't want to raise up the strings too much and lose the sleek feel of it.

Now, I'm pretty sure that what I need to do is to raise the action on my E string and leave all else untouched, but since i haven't done any setup besides a minor truss rod ajustment after buying the bass, i'd need some advice on this prior to make some mistake.

Any advice would be great!

Thanks,
J

[XylemBassGuitar]

BigBadJohnny,

You're right, probably the best thing to do would be to raise the action on the E-string.

I'm assuming that the bridge on your bass has individually adjustable saddles that can each be raised with an allen key adjusment. You'll want to raise the E-string saddle about a half-turn at a time, re-tune the string and then check for buzz again all the way down the fretboard. If the string still buzzes, raise the action another half-turn and repeat until it doesn't buzz.

After raising the action in this manner, you'll need to re-intonate the E-string. This is done by tuning the string to pitch, then comparing the tuning of the harmonic at the 12th fret to the tuning of the fretted note at the 12th fret. You may want to use a credit card to fret the note at the 12th on a fretless to be as accurate as possible (your finger will be much wider than the credit card so you'll get a more accurate reading).

Your bridge will also have screws at its back, where you can move the saddles fowards and backwards. If the fretted note is flat compared to the harmonic, you'll want to move the string's saddle forward (towards the neck) re-tune the string and compare the tunings again. If the fretted note is sharp in comparison, you'll want to move the string's saddle back, away from the neck (and re-tune/re-check). Adjust the postion of the saddle until the fretted note is in tune with the harmonic.

You may also want to raise one side of your pickup slightly (if you can adjust one side of the pickup) to bring it closer to the raised E-string.

Let us know how it turns out, good luck!

[BigBadJohnny]

Thanks for the advice. The bass does have independent saddles so i'll do just as your recommended.
I'm in doubt if i'll raise de pickup on the E side. The volume of the E string is already bigger than the other strings (or at leats it sounds so) so i'll just do the saddle and intonation work and check how it sounds and with some luck it will end up more balanced than before.

I'll post about the success (i hope) of the operation.

[BigBadJohnny]

It worked perfectly, thanks for the advice XylemBassGuitar.

I ended up raising the action one full turn to reach the "non buzz" state and there was no need to raise the pickup, since now the sound volume looks much more balanced than before from string to string.

There was actually no need for harmonic re-intonation, since the harmonic and the actual 12th "fret" are still in the same spot.

[XylemBassGuitar]

Glad to help, enjoy that fretless!