too much sustain

[Fujiano]

i think my bass has too much sustain
for ex: when i play a major scale up to down , lower strings are still sounding and makes very annoying noise :|

any way to lower the sustain ?
or am i wrong ? it's just natural bass sound ?
please help !

(i use american standart fender jazz bass & .40 gauge nickelwound d'addario strings)
thanks...

[D Rokk]

mute them with ur fingers.. thats how i do it

[ErebusBass]

The problem is that you are continuing to let the string ring. Mute it with your fingers.


There is NEVER too much sustain.

[RTL]

Do what I do and place a Tootsie Roll underneath the strings just behind the bridge pickup. If it doesn't help, make sure you lower the strings until they are firmly holding the Tootsie Roll in place. That's how Jamerson did it

[Metal Matt]

Originally Posted by ErebusBass

The problem is that you are continuing to let the string ring. Mute it with your fingers.


There is NEVER too much sustain.

+ 1 trillion.

[JTE]

Nah, you don't have too much sustain. You have too little technique. It's not a set-up issue with your bass. Learn to damp the strings you're not playing. How? Depends a lot on how YOU play. A typical finger-style player? Use rest strokes so when your plucking finger leaves the A string for example, it rests on the E string. The kills the vibrations on the E string. And use the fingers of the fretting hand to mute strings too.

In his instructional/interview video with Jerrry Jemmott, Jaco Pastorious mentions how it took him a long time to get "Donna Lee" clean sounding. He had to work on muting strings to get the sound out correctly. Spend some time learning Jerry Jemmott lines, and some Rocco Prestia stuff from Tower of Power. If you can play "What Is Hip" with those deadly 16th notes properly articulated, playing a major scale won't be any problem at all.

You can always mute strings to kill sustain, but you can't put more sustain into a bass than it has in the way it's made. In that sense I totally agree that you can't have too much sustain, and that's the way it sounds from the OP's desdcription of the problem. However, if you're talking about trying to cop the dull "thut" of for example McCartney's Hofner, then it's not about muting- it's that the bass just doesn't have sustain. And that's inherent in the way the bass is made. But you can get pretty darn close to that effect with good technique so I wouldn't buy a hollow body like that just for a song or two.

jte

[BigOldHarry]

yeah, this is a technique thing. Practice muting.

[xgator4u]

Originally Posted by ErebusBass

The problem is that you are continuing to let the string ring. Mute it with your fingers.


There is NEVER too much sustain.

+1
There is no such thing as too much sustain. learn to control the strings, as opposed to the strings controlling you.

[Fujiano]

well i'm a hell of a rookie indeed xD
thanks to everyone who posts

[PJSShearer]

My 1973 MIA Precision (they didn't make 'em anywhere else then!) had a piece of foam glued under the Bridge cover to mute the strings which took care of this issue. However, tuning the instrument could be a problem as the note wouldn't ring long enough to get an handle on whether it was sharp or flat :-).

[DanRJBrasil]

Originally Posted by ErebusBass

The problem is that you are continuing to let the string ring. Mute it with your fingers.


There is NEVER too much sustain.

+1
even more true with a bolt-on

[Pilgrim]

Tuck a strip of foam under the strings. Every P used to come with a strip of foam between the strings and the bridge cover for this reason. (I know, it's on my '63 P.)