rattiling notes on my geddy?! help!!

[jpark369]

i have a couple month old geddy j bass, which i love. i mostly play finger style, but i use a pick often for punk, and other faster stuff. when i play hard and fast, with a pick, i get some real rattiling and noise out of the notes. trying to play anything hard and fast produces a rattle and some serious noise out of this thing. i play with my mids and highs up there, similar to the matt freeman, rancid sound. i dont know if this is a problem with my string height, action or some truss rod stuff, or my actual technique. should i be able to play pretty hard with my pick and not hear any other noise but notes, or is that how it always is? any adivice or information is greatly appreciated! thanks. rock on...

[BellBottomBlues]

maybe your fingers arent holding down the string well enough?

[jpark369]

the string is rattiling for sure. i checked out that pade and it didn't really help in finding the problem. i dont know if i should raise my string height or mess with the truss rod. i'm pretty sure i'm holding down the frets...thanks though. maybe i'm picking too hard? i usually play with the fingers and i'm kind of a novice picker. do you think that i with the string noise i should do the truss rod or do it from the bridge? ive also heard the geddys, with their thinner necks, can get warped pretty easily with temp changes? its been pretty humid around here, maybe thats it? ****, i dont know. bring on the advice. thanks

[MagicMedicine]

Well I agree with the first response. Everything you need to know to fix this problem should be in that sticky.

From the way you have responded you seem to make it clear that you do not do any of your own setups. Sounds like the problem may be that you need to make some truss rod adjustments, and with all truss rod adjustments you also need to make bridge adjustments to compensate.

Research as much as you can on bass guitar setups and how to adjust your bass to a proper setup before you even try to adjust your neck (saying this assuming you are not very experienced with it).

But first do the following things to tell us more about what the problem might be:

Find something to measure with in millimeters (like a ruler)
1. Push down your E string at the first fret with your fretting hand, and at the same time use elbow of the oposite arm to push down the E string at the very last fret, using your elbow lets that arm and hand be free to move and measure the distance between the frets and the string at the half way point of the neck. So at about the 9th fret, measure the distance between the top of the fret, and the bottom of the string.

This will tell us how much relief is in your neck at this time. Your neck should always have a very tiny amount of curve to it, and should never be absolutely straight.

2. Now without holding down any strings at all, measure the distance between the bottom of the E string and the top of the 17th fret.

This will tell us how high/low your action is.

3. Look down your neck on both sides so that you can see any curve it may have, describe what it looks like.

Tell us these things and we can probably tell you what the problem is.

Also as each season passes you will usually need to do a fresh setup on your guitar as the wood in the neck will expand or contract with different humidity levels and the truss rod will always stay the same, so the neck will usually need an adjustment each season.