uneven volume at high frets?

[BrandonBass]

I have a jazz bass set to pretty low action and the PU is pretty near the strings. The E and G string are a tad lower than the A and D. String-to-string volume is fine, however. That is until I fret the E string at the higher frets(15 onwards), which makes the string closer to the PU and it has significant volume boost when I play.

Is there anyway around this? Like I said from E to G string's 1st fret to 12th fret everythings fine.

[wshines1892]

Get a compressor, or learn to play with a softer touch on the 15th fret. Things just get louder the higher you move up the neck, a compressor automatically will attenuate the volume of notes if it goes above the threshold. Compressors generally have an adjustable threshold so you can adjust how much of an increase it take to trigger the compression, and the ratio for how much for it takes to make the signal louder. They're useful in that you can get the punch of plucking harder without the volume increase.

[BrandonBass]

I actually own a compressor, but by the time I can even out the notes Ive killed a large part of my dynamics.

[Slax]

The Steve Miller band song "Take the Money and Run" the bass seems to do this during the "solo" piece it has and I always found it somewhat distracting. I'm interested in the resolution of this as well...

[wshines1892]

I don't know of any fix besides a lighter touch or compression. If there is another fix, I too am interested. Are you sure that you're setting the ratio too? The ratio would determine how much signal increase translates into decibel increase, and if it's set to infinite then that would be what's killing your dynamic since at that point no amount of harder plucking would increase.

[Turnaround]

Originally Posted by BrandonBass

I have a jazz bass set to pretty low action and the PU is pretty near the strings. The E and G string are a tad lower than the A and D. String-to-string volume is fine, however. That is until I fret the E string at the higher frets(15 onwards), which makes the string closer to the PU and it has significant volume boost when I play.

Is there anyway around this? Like I said from E to G string's 1st fret to 12th fret everythings fine.

One approach is to lower your pickups. Look at it this way - For ease of calculation, let's say the strings are a quarter of an inch away from the pickups before you fret a note at the 15th fret. And when you fret at the 15th it lowers the string by an eighth of an inch at the pickup. The string is 50% closer to the pickup when fretted.

If the string was lowered to be a half-inch away from the pickup, fretting at the 15th would still only bring the string one eighth closer - that's only 25% closer.

These are not real numbers, they just illustrate the concept. The smaller difference, the less volume change there will be.

[groooooove]

Originally Posted by Turnaround

One approach is to lower your pickups. Look at it this way - For ease of calculation, let's say the strings are a quarter of an inch away from the pickups before you fret a note at the 15th fret. And when you fret at the 15th it lowers the string by an eighth of an inch at the pickup. The string is 50% closer to the pickup when fretted.

If the string was lowered to be a half-inch away from the pickup, fretting at the 15th would still only bring the string one eighth closer - that's only 25% closer.

These are not real numbers, they just illustrate the concept. The smaller difference, the less volume change there will be.

yeah.

i'd lower it a tiny bit and see how that helps. especially with passive pickups, they tend to sound a low fuller really close to the strings, but it could be the only easy solution.

the other thing that could help is a really good setup. if you can manage to get your neck perfectly straight and your strings really low, then the height your pulling the string down-even up high on the neck- wont be as much, and wont make such a big difference.

[BrandonBass]

^^^

Thanks for the tip, I adjusted the PUs lower and it helped considerably. I actually only adjusted the neck PU, it doesnt seem to affect the bridge PU as much.

[Turnaround]

Right! The absoulte difference at the bridge pickup is much less than at the neck pickup - simple geometry. Glad it helped.