Best foam/mute for P Bass

[Rayjay]

Nordstrand Mute! It's a bit more that regular foam, but it does not mess with the tuning or intonation. Highly, highly recommended.

 

[Rock Salad]

Best foam ever for light muting of overtones.
I also use a strip of velcro~3/4" wide with a nerf dart glued under for heavy muting, also gives very slight mwah.
The best is cloth though felt or sock Terry cloth, just not as pretty.

neither affect intonation just like cloth muting.
Lee Sklar recommends keeping sets of two little square pieces of foam of different densities, and to wedge them between the strings not under or over.
Yes I know not p basses, not even any tort! I love mutes

 

[MtManiac]

I've also used my nephew's dirty sock.

Ewwww, David!

 

[ElectricBass72]

I prefer the strings on my P bass to sustain into infinity.

 

[bikeplate]

Best mute is no mute

 

[WillyW]

egg crate foam

 

[dougjwray]

As I mentioned recently in another thread, a friend of mine once played on a session with Tony Levin. Tony pulled a disposable diaper out of his gig bag, cut it to the proper size, and used it for mute.

 

[freshbass]

So I've been searching for the best sort of foam with which to dampen my P Bass but everything I've tried thus far hasn't been right, it's either over dampened or just don't done very much. So what do TBer's use?

I use the ashtray mute system, what Fender's used to come with, I have them on all 3 of my flat wound strung Precisions.

 

[jbrown173]

I've discovered something that works nicely. I got a few varieties of foam to experiment with. I had a good feeling about memory foam, and it does work pretty well, but it's tricky to get the pressure just right, as with every other thing I've tried. The thing I finally settled on is an extremely dense foam that I almost didn't even try because I assumed it would be too hard, but the advantage is that you barely have to use any pressure at all so the strings aren't pushed sharp. If you look at the funky car tire sponge below you'll see two types of foam glued together. The dark stuff is a very light foam, which didn't work very well, but the gray stuff is that very dense foam. I cut the gray stuff apart from the soft black foam and then carefully cut the gray foam so that it just lightly touched the strings when I slid it underneath next to the bridge...and it works perfectly! The tricky part is cutting it to just the perfect height. A sharp knife worked much better than scissors for this. One thing you could try is to cut it so that it doesn't touch the strings enough, then experiment with gluing layers of cardboard or plastic underneath to get it to the perfect height. I haven't tried that yet, but I'm figuring that would also make it easier to slide it under the strings and then yank it out again. I got this product at Walmart, but you can search and probably find it elsewhere. Just look carefully at the pictures because I've seen similar looking products where both foam layers look too soft.

 

[GIBrat51]

I use what Fender used to put in the bridge cover of their P-Basses; a taper-cut piece of 1/2" thick weather-stripping foam. At least, that's what was in the cover of my lefty '78 P-Bass - which the original owner had taken off, but kept. There's a faint outline of the original foam on the inside of the cover. So, I just made a new one, and glued it in. With that, over a set of light gauge #3025 GHS Precision Flats (pretty much clones of the Squier-made Fender Flats it shipped with), it sounds like I want it to sound; which is, like it did when it was new...

 

[MtManiac]

I use Fret Wraps, I know it's not a foam mute but it works well!

FretWraps String Muters (3-Pack)

There are two types of muting - one to just keep strings from vibrating when they’re not intended to be played, and one that’s used for a particular muted tone. The second type you really need a mute at the bridge. Do these do that?