How do YOU combat dead spots?

[Drop1]

Im.sure we all suffer some spots that are deader than others on our necks.

Ive never picked up a bass that all notes had the same sustain.

I've seen 2 ways players addresses dead spots. one being to strike the note and very lightly play the note an octave lower..

I dont do that. If know I'm going to land on a sustained note in a dead spot, I just squeeze the crap outta the neck. That old man grip comes in handy. Doing that easily doubles, sometimes even triples the notes sustain. I've been doing it that way forever.

Are there any other ways to compensate for dead spots? (You can include fx in your answer if you'd like)

 

[Brandon Shea]

I have a very inconvenient dead spot on my P bass (3rd fret on the low E), but I've been able to work around it by holding the octave on the D string at the same time whenever I need the note to sustain. It's not perfect but it's close enough, especially with a little bit of compression to help out. I haven't found the need to strike the octave at all; simply fretting the note is enough to get the sympathetic vibrations going.

 

[micguy]

I build my own basses. Dead spots are a function of the resonances of the neck. On my basses, I do the following things:

1) They're all 5 strings. This means the neck is (a bit) heavier and (a bunch) stiffer than a 4 string neck. If you play enough P's and J's, you find that the P's have less pronounced dead spots in general - bigger necks help (in general).

2) They all have roasted maple necks. Roasted maple is lighter and stiffer than regular maple. This helps move the dead spot up the neck a bit.

3) They all have graphite reinforcements - again, stiffening the neck, driving the resonance upwards.

4) They all have light tuners (Hipshot ultralites in my case). The reduced mass loading on the end of the neck...moves the resonance up the neck a bit.

All bass guitar necks have resonances. They all have places where there is reduced sustain. Despite the protestations of some folks who have spent a lot on their custom built basses, there is no bass builder that gets around the simple Physics of this.

That said, if you move the resonance up the neck, it tends to be less apparent while playing. In my case, the area with less sustain is typically centered a couple frets higher than what you'd get on a Fender - it's at the 8th or 9th fret on the G string, and less obvious because of that (Physics lecture left out for brevity). Couple that with the fact that I almost never play single notes up there - I use that area of the G string for octaves of notes played on the A string or fifths of notes played on the D, and it just isn't a practical concern for me.

 

[Drop1]

I have a very inconvenient dead spot on my P bass (3rd fret on the low E), but I've been able to work around it by holding the octave on the D string at the same time whenever I need the note to sustain. It's not perfect but it's close enough, especially with a little bit of compression to help out. I haven't found the need to strike the octave at all; simply fretting the note is enough to get the sympathetic vibrations going.

I wanted to thank you.
You're so right, just holding the octave while striking a note in a dead spot activates the crap outta the held octave. Kinda funny the ringing octave actually has a longer sustain than any other note on my bass lol. Definitely did not expect that result.

 

[MYLOWFREQ]

No need to combat, they're already dead.

 

[Drop1]

No need to combat, they're already dead.

Nice.

 

[Schizo Sapiens]

My 5-string has dead spot at 7th fret of G string. If I need to play that D as a single sustained note, I will get it at 12th fret on D string. In other cases (short notes, fills, chords) it doesn't matter.

My headless 4-string doesn't seem to have dead spots, but it's new to me, so maybe I'll find them. Maybe it doesn't have them because there's no G string, cause I tune it BEAD )