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Dead Zone?

Father Gino

Father Gino

Nov 3, 2018
616
1,218
Farthard, Connecticut
#1
I’ve got a fretless EBMM Sterling 4H strung with TI flats. I played this same combo (different Sterling) for years with no issues. My new Sterling has very noticeable lack of sustain on low D on the G string. The strings are 9 months old with maybe 100 hours on them.

Give me some info on dead spots. I’ve never had one of these that bothered me enough to worry about it.

Does it make sense that the same note (the octave, not open D) played on the D string is fine?

Is it possible that the string itself is the culprit? Twisted? Defective? All of the other notes on that string are fine.

I stuck a small c-clamp on the head stock and the sustain improved a lot. But now when the D note is held, it seems to have some kind of harmonic sort of thing that moves to Eb. I’m so far only listening to this experiment through headphones and I have heard strange harmonic sounding artifacts with long notes above the 14th fret that I’ve never heard when playing through an amp. I don’t know if these artifacts would be audible with the rest of a band going on behind them. This artifact stuff I’m talking about is audible only when I’m holding a note for as long as it takes to decay completely.
 
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#4
Dead spots are a frequent topic on TB. There are tons of great discussions, the google search will serve you better than the built in search function.

The problem may go away with the installation of a new string, but more likely, the issue has to do with the neck: Due to its geometry, wood density and weight the neck dampens the string's energy on a given frequency, which swows up as a 'dead spot'.
 
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#5
yeah, I’ve read about dead spots but I’ve never had one that bothered me. This one bothers me. I’ll definitely try a different string, but I’m fairly sure it’s a dead spot and perhaps adhesive tire balancing weights will make it more tolerable. I still wonder why it wouldn’t affect the same note on the D string.
 
#9
Father Gino said:
I still wonder why it wouldn’t affect the same note on the D string.
Click to expand...
Because the length of the neck between the fret where the note played and the bridge is different. As far as I understand, in simplistic terms the neck resonates differently according to the position where the note that rings (or fails to) is fretted. This is why they typican FSO dead spot is around 7-9 frets on g-string, but not on 12-14 on d-string.

I'm sure someone can get more technical about this :)
 
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#10
I had a Yamaha BB that sounded perfect with GHS Boomers. I tried a set of Swing Bass and all of sudden the dead spot appeared, 5th fret on the G string.

Overall, the Swing Bass didn't suit the bass as much as the Boomers, so I went back to them. And the dead spot disappeared .... almost. Previously I hadn't noticed it, but after the Swing Bass had pointed it out to me, I could hear it. But not enough for it to be a problem.

I never worked out if there was a general rule at work there, or if it was just a weird one-off situation.
 
#11
Father Gino said:
yeah, I’ve read about dead spots but I’ve never had one that bothered me. This one bothers me. I’ll definitely try a different string, but I’m fairly sure it’s a dead spot and perhaps adhesive tire balancing weights will make it more tolerable. I still wonder why it wouldn’t affect the same note on the D string.
Click to expand...
Because it is at a different location along the length of the neck.
 
#12
Father Gino said:
I’ve got a fretless EBMM Sterling 4H strung with TI flats. I played this same combo (different Sterling) for years with no issues. My new Sterling has very noticeable lack of sustain on low D on the G string. The strings are 9 months old with maybe 100 hours on them.

Give me some info on dead spots. I’ve never had one of these that bothered me enough to worry about it.

Does it make sense that the same note (the octave, not open D) played on the D string is fine?

Is it possible that the string itself is the culprit? Twisted? Defective? All of the other notes on that string are fine.

I stuck a small c-clamp on the head stock and the sustain improved a lot. But now when the D note is held, it seems to have some kind of harmonic sort of thing that moves to Eb. I’m so far only listening to this experiment through headphones and I have heard strange harmonic sounding artifacts with long notes above the 14th fret that I’ve never heard when playing through an amp. I don’t know if these artifacts would be audible with the rest of a band going on behind them. This artifact stuff I’m talking about is audible only when I’m holding a note for as long as it takes to decay completely.
Click to expand...
If you have fender style tuners, try to stick a tire wight (10gr) on a tuner. I have fixed several basses with dead spots by this way. You can use a stick tape first to understand if it works.
IMG_7745.jpeg
 
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#14
Panych said:
If you have fender style tuners, try to stick a tire wight (10gr) on a tuner. I have fixed several basses with dead spots by this way. You can use a stick tape first to understand if it works.
View attachment 7428685
Click to expand...
Holy cow, I do this too lol. I've never heard of anyone else doing it, unless I actually learned it from a comment of yours maybe like 10 years ago? I can't remember who I learned it from. I use 5 gram ones on mine as it tends to work well with less weight.
 
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#16
I check both my Bacchus BPB1RSM and Fender Vintera 50sP which has Ti flat loaded . 7 months set on Bacchus and 3.5 years set on Vintera 50sP.

Found slightly dead note on Bacchus C#@Gstring , tone decay slowly after 4 second compare to others fret note on same G string. This dead note far less notable when this bass has EB Cobalt flat 2814 installed.

On Vintera 50sP , hard to find out in clean signal, but once overdrive pedal engage, the dead note happen on C# @ G string . Overdrive sustain decay after 4.5 second.

The worst dead spot found on my bass are one of the 2019 Player P ( been own 4 pieces , 2018, 2019, 2025x2 ). C note @ G string completely dead and choke. Following are 2007 Fender MIM Std Jazz.
 
#17
IronLung1986 said:
Holy cow, I do this too lol. I've never heard of anyone else doing it, unless I actually learned it from a comment of yours maybe like 10 years ago? I can't remember who I learned it from. I use 5 gram ones on mine as it tends to work well with less weight.
Click to expand...
Around ten years ago I had a beautiful Fender AVRI 57 Pbass. It had a dead spot on the fourth fret of E string. Instead of using a quite heavy fat finger to fix it, I stuck a small magnet to the tuner of the bass and it helped. Then I found tire weights which were similar to the magnet I used in terms of weight and I tried them, and they worked as well. Since then I have been using tire weights to fix dead spots.
 
#18
Panych said:
Around ten years ago I had a beautiful Fender AVRI 57 Pbass. It had a dead spot on the fourth fret of E string. Instead of using a quite heavy fat finger to fix it, I stuck a small magnet to the tuner of the bass and it helped. Then I found tire weights which were similar to the magnet I used in terms of weight and I tried them, and they worked as well. Since then I have been using tire weights to fix dead spots.
Click to expand...
Very similar story here. The fat finger is sort of the first step but you quickly discover that it's way overkill, deadens the feel of the instrument way too much, weighs a ton and is generally an obtrusive solution. But it does prove that resonant frequencies (dead spots) move by altering the overall mass of the bass. With just a little more (or less) mass you can nudge them a bit so they're more between the notes than right on them. I mostly cured a dead spot on my Stingray this way. Michael Pedulla cured a dead spot on my Pentabuzz by dremeling a load of holes under the pickups to remove mass, so that can work too if you have somewhere on the bass you can do it.
 
#19
Father Gino said:
I’ve got a fretless EBMM Sterling 4H strung with TI flats. I played this same combo (different Sterling) for years with no issues. My new Sterling has very noticeable lack of sustain on low D on the G string. The strings are 9 months old with maybe 100 hours on them.

Give me some info on dead spots. I’ve never had one of these that bothered me enough to worry about it.

Does it make sense that the same note (the octave, not open D) played on the D string is fine?

Is it possible that the string itself is the culprit? Twisted? Defective? All of the other notes on that string are fine.

I stuck a small c-clamp on the head stock and the sustain improved a lot. But now when the D note is held, it seems to have some kind of harmonic sort of thing that moves to Eb. I’m so far only listening to this experiment through headphones and I have heard strange harmonic sounding artifacts with long notes above the 14th fret that I’ve never heard when playing through an amp. I don’t know if these artifacts would be audible with the rest of a band going on behind them. This artifact stuff I’m talking about is audible only when I’m holding a note for as long as it takes to decay completely.
Click to expand...
Are the dead spots evident when the bass is not plugged in to an amp? Did you always have these dead spots, or just when you installed these strings, or is this a recent development?
 
#20
Thanks to all for the info. I never thought of putting weights on the tuning keys which sounds like an easy and temporary way of experimenting. This dead spot is the worst I’ve ever encountered but it’s not something I might even notice if I don’t play a half note on that D. I don’t have a lot of playing time on this bass, but my next project (in its infancy) might be a good match for it. Now I can play it more and stick little weights all over the place.
I recently convinced myself to stop the endless search for the perfect string and put TIs on everything. I may have to rethink that. Maybe tapes? The quest for unobtainable perfection continues…
 

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