Bass Mutes

[rageatmachine14]

I need to know if you guys have any suggestions as to what to use as a bass mute. I'm only looking for something to mute open notes to stop them from ringing out. Iv tried a few different things and nothing seems to really work that well. And i did try searching first and I couldn't find much. Any ideas?

 

[Taxt]

What have you tried so far?

 

[J. Crawford]

I went to a local craft store, bought one of those foam paintbrushes. I ripped out the brush part, and everything else that wasnt foam. It fits perfectly under a 4 string, perfectly.

Only cost a dollar, too!

 

[Hollywars]

Don't people use dried sponges?

 

[boamedt]

Or yellow foam

 

[John Wentzien]

Learn to mute with your fingers.

 

[69limeRev]

Foam pipe insulation is my personal favorite.

 

[GKevinK]

I've tried most approaches, even the fancy device from bassmute.com. In the end, it depends on exactly what kind of muting action you really want, and whether you want it all of the time or only on some songs. Using your hands is great if you just want to stop the string *now*, but persuading the string to decay more rapidly is hard to do in any very consistent way by hand, especially if you have other notes to get played in the meantime.

I wanted to be able to have a rapid decay to mimic an upright for just a couple of songs, but have the ease of changing back to the normal sustain otherwise. The need to change quickly made the inexpensive route of using foam impractical, so I sprung for the gizmo from bassmute.com. I can say that it does it's job pretty darn well, and allows you to adjust the muting action you prefer.

Engaging that gizmo, or putting foam under the strings by the bridge, is going to have an effect on the tuning/intonation of your bass, though. Having to retune upon engaging the widget takes away from the 'quick change' aspect of the thing. In the end I decided to just use a different bass with the foam and tuned appropriately if I really want optimize that aspect. If I don't feel like carrying the extra bass to a particular gig, or if the set list / seque design doesn't allow the time to change instruments I just mute the best I can with my hands and get on with it.

 

[Captain Simian]

I've had good results using the foam that comes in DiMarzio's pickup packaging. They need to advertise that more. "Free foam mute with every pickup!"

 

[ColinGWood]

I cut up some padding from inside one of those little poker travel cases that are all the rage these days. nice!

 

[rageatmachine14]

thanks for all the ideas i didn't even think of foam. and i have tried muting with my fingers thats why I usually use a floating thumb technique but for some of the songs that my band plays requires a lot of open notes while playing on other strings so i wanted something to make those opens a little less boomy.

 

[bassbenj]

thanks for all the ideas i didn't even think of foam. and i have tried muting with my fingers thats why I usually use a floating thumb technique but for some of the songs that my band plays requires a lot of open notes while playing on other strings so i wanted something to make those opens a little less boomy.

Yeah, you sort of have it. For "muting" I'd say fingers are the best thing to use. Everybody finds their own way but my technique generally used the thumb laying across the low strings for muting and the left hand to mute the high strings. This not only works well but I found it to be essential because most of my basses tend to have huge sustain with both open and fretted notes and with out carefully controlled muting tends to develop into a mess.

Now the foam damping on the other hand is another animal. I usually only use it on my Carvin semi-hollow acoustic bass to reduce sustain of all notes to give a really decent upright imitation. Works well on any bass. And upright imitation works even better if you change your plucking technique to be more like that used on an upright as well. I just use a chunk of plain old polyurethane foam. You'll find that low strings are harder to damp than high strings so I cut the foam in a wedge shape so when you jam it under the strings (near the bridge) you can adjust it so the low strings get more tension. Also it provides some adjustment if you angle the foam various ways across the strings. Just experiment. It won't hurt anything.

 

[derelicte]

wear oven mitts. legiiiiiiiit mute.