Cleaning up your sound

[Murdock_]

Can anyone give some tips on the best way to eliminate unwanted sounds, such as notes ringing out, or fingers being heard moving over the fretboard etc?

Thanks

[MNAirHead]

What kind of gear are you running?

Much of this has to do with setup.. amp.. string type.. where you set the tone controls.. how hot your bass is..

Some of it is just tenured practice.

Tim

One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is through moving to flat wounds.

[Murdock_]

At home, all I have is a practice amp and a Pbass with standered guage strings.

[Jake of Bass]

As far as finger being heard over the fretboard, try using either flats or if you're using rounds (like me) get some string lube from your local music store. If you have presence control on your effects and/or amp, remove some of it as it tends to accentuate the string sliding sounds. A lot of it is practice and good technique though.

[Chunk-O-Funk]

As far as unwanted ringing notes. Practice both right hand and left hand muting techniques. Use them playing in the open position. Adapt a bass line you like to the open position using as much open notes as possible.

Left hand finger noise (to varying degrees) is probably just inherent of the instrument, but as you play more you will develop a more subtle touch when moving up and down the neck that makes it as quite as possible. Like mentioned, the strings and EQ settings do make a difference, but I wouldn't compromise the sound you are going for. I think the ability to control this simply comes in time. Obviously you are already conscious of it, so that's a start.

[fearceol]

To add to the good advice given so far, I'd say check out the "Floating Thumb Technique" sticky near the top of this forum.

[dmusic148]

Originally Posted by fearceol

To add to the good advice given so far, I'd say check out the "Floating Thumb Technique" sticky near the top of this forum.

+1.

[AlembicPlayer]

all good sound advice. I use flats, so no finger noise at all.

as well as right hand muting, you may want to try a compressor to control dynamics and bass swell. It's no replacement for good technique, but they work well especially for slap.

[Infernal Affair]

I'm not trying to condone laziness since I do believe that during practice one of the things everyone should work on is developing technique, but most of the time that string noise is not going to be heard in a band setting, especially anything rock related. Another thing you can do is turn down the highs a little.

There was a thread I read some time back that had some good advice and exercises on eliminating string noise. I don't remember what the thread was called but doing searches for "string noise" and stuff might work.

[Lefty@best]

just curious, what is the "floating thumb" thing all about?

i also found that if you just try to stay inside the box and not move up and down the neck too much it helps noise because your not dragging your fretting fingers across the strings. thats why i got a 5 string. instead of having to move down the neck on the E, i can just move down to the B string, same notes, less drag.

[Infernal Affair]

Originally Posted by Lefty@best

just curious, what is the "floating thumb" thing all about?

floating thumb techniqe

There's a sticky in the forum for it. Kinda hard to notice since there's so many stickies.

Just to clarify ahead of time, moving anchor and floating thumb are two different things.

[cnltb]

Originally Posted by Murdock_

Can anyone give some tips on the best way to eliminate unwanted sounds, such as notes ringing out, or fingers being heard moving over the fretboard etc?

Thanks

As said before,Sort out your technique of both hands and these problems are likely to disappear.
I doubt the equipment has anything to do with it.