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"No dead spots"... WHAT???

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 271037
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#121
Max Bogosity said:
I bet Eric Johnson was happier before he decided he could hear what brand of battery was in his Tube Screamer.
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I have fundamental doubts that he's ever been happy. I saw him do a huge Fender "special event" at NAMM 1985, right as he was breaking out, and he proceeded to just badmouth Fender for the entire concert. I was very young but knew that wasn't right. The guys from Fender huddled in the back of the room were obviously not happy and they all left after the third song.

I'm convinced to this day that incident is why he didn't get a signature model until 2010 or whenever that was.

Like I said, I don't think he's ever been happy. About anything.
 
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#122
Dead spots only cause me second thought on fretless. The typical G string #5-8 fret span. Then again, I can play those notes on the D string with a warmer, bloomier timbre, so it doesn't affect me that much.

On fretted, for me, notes in that span on the G string are typically short duration, used for double stops, or popped. So, no biggie.
 
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#125
Sid Fang said:
It's not just the use of graphite as a material on the Steinberger, it's also the headless design.
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Both. Can't remember where I saw it, but Fender did a prototype headless in the late 1970s precisely to address complaints about dead spots. It worked, but they couldn't figure out how to make it look good and they were having some fairly serious financial issues at that point, so it went nowhere.

I am convinced it's the SOLID composite of the Steinberger neck (no truss rod) and the lack of a headstock together that do the trick.
 
#127
BassmanM said:
Imho, dead spots have absolutely no effect on at least 95% of all my playing situations. I can hardly imagine a situation where I would need one of those typical notes to ring for forever either. Hence, I do not worry too much about dead spots.

I do not know whether basses with no dead spots whatsoever exist. But just as much as I believe you that you have never owned one without them, I tend to believe those who claim they know of a bass which has none.

Then again, your hearing ability might be above average. In German, we speak of people who "hear the grass growing" or "the fleas coughing"... :laugh:;)
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Geez. Wowsers! I'd like to know what they put in the hamburgs in Germany.
 
#128
Deleted member 271037 said:
You can even SEE them by watching how the string vibrates.
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On my two Warmoth necked basses (one fretless and one fretted) I can feel the dead spots more so than seeing them. When playing a good note there is very little vibration felt through the neck however when I play one of the "dead" notes I can feel the neck vibrate a lot more. From what I understand it is the natural harmonic resonance of the neck (all materials have it to some degree) cancelling out that note quicker than other notes.
 
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#130
I quit reading after page three; the redundancy was starting to get to me. I will say that if there were no dead spots I would have kept my second and third basses (both short-scalers).

I also will say that there are degrees of dead spots, some at an "acceptable" level and some that are just intolerable. And I have some basses (Multivox Marvels, large vintage Gretsches, my Epi Les Paul Standard and vintage 2+2 Embassy) that truly are dead spot free. And some (Gretsch G6072 and Dillion 335-004) where adding the Fat)finger truly eliminated the dead spot; it did not simply "move" it. Placement is everything.

And then I've had the Fender-style headstocks where I had to take what I could get re dead spot removal.
 
#131
pingvuiini said:
Here is an isolated track of the late great James Jamerson with audible dead spots at 0:31, 0:59 and 2:19.


To add to the graphite issue, I've owned a few Status Graphite basses and some have had significant dead spots. So I would say that graphite is by no means a guarantee against dead spots.
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Ok I plead ignorance. Almost 20 years of playing and I now know what 'dead spots' are. I sort of thought it was related to uneven frets and buzzing. That Jamerson clip finally cleared things up, thank you. You can definitely hear that C# die a quick death.

Ultimately this is what I'd call getting mired in minutia, and not something that will ever bother me enough to care.

Now one issue that I was ignorant about for years until TB enlightened me, was the issue of neck dive. Once that was pointed out and I noticed it, holy hell it bothered me. So much so that neck dive is the first thing I look for when trying out a new bass, and all but assured I'd never play a Thunderbird or a Mustang.
 
#132
Deleted member 271037 said:
I currently own over 30 basses. Some are cheap entry level stuff or quirky vintage models but most of them are quite expensive, top-of-the-range or custom made instruments.

I must have owned more than 50 basses over the years.

Counting the basses I've played in stores or borrowed... I must have played HUNDREDS of basses.

EVERY SINGLE ONE of them had dead spots. Some were less noticable that others and the exact location on the neck could vary. But they ALL had dead spots. Bolt-on, neck through, set neck, graphite rods... they ALL have dead spots in my experience.

Looking at the physics behind dead spots I don't understand how it would even be possible to design a resonating wooden instrument such as the bass guitar without any deadspots. Even a device like the Fatfinger, which is designed to "tune out" deadspots, doesn't really remove them. The deadspots are simply moved to other notes.

Yet, hardly a week goes by without reading a NBD thread here on Talkbass where someone says their new bass has "no dead spots".


Which leaves me with these two options:

1) I'm the most unlucky guy ever when it comes to basses and dead spots (plus I must have gotten the science behind deadspots all wrong).

or

2) Lots of people don't really understand what dead spots are. I asked a friend who is a guitar player about this and he thought a dead spot was simply a bad fret. Is this a common misconception?

Anyway, I'm genuinely baffled by the number of claims about "no dead spots" around here, even on the cheapest entry level basses.

So which one is it, 1) or 2)?
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From where I'm sitting, 1. My Rickenbacker has no dead spots, but it was a pretty steep learning curve to figure out how to "tune" the truss rods so that a) I got the relief that I was after, and b) so that there was no back-buzzing, and no strong nodes or anti-nodes on the fingerboard. I haven't tested whether this is possible on other instruments with two-way truss rods (where relief is set by pushing them against themselves rather than the neck), but on a Ric, it's a simpler, albeit more fiddly system that can be balanced, because the neck plays a far more critical structural role.
 
#133
dasaten said:
Graphite/carbon fiber and aluminum necks don't have dead spots from what I understand.

Every bass I've played has had at least one dead spot. It'd be really nice honestly to have a neck where you know it'd never get them.
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Actually, they do have a "dead spot", but on those necks? It's a case of "you can't get there from here..." The points on an aluminum/graphite neck where you could get a sympathetic resonance that cancels/severely dampens the note - which is what a "dead spot" really is - are off one end or the other of the bass' neck. But, they're there - floating around somewhere... Unfortunately, wooden necks have sympathetic resonance nodes that are accessible... For the record, none of my basses - even my '78 P-Bass - have a really noticeable dead spot. It's there - on some of them; but, I have to listen really hard for it...:cool:
 
#134
Deleted member 271037 said:
I currently own over 30 basses. Some are cheap entry level stuff or quirky vintage models but most of them are quite expensive, top-of-the-range or custom made instruments.

I must have owned more than 50 basses over the years.

Counting the basses I've played in stores or borrowed... I must have played HUNDREDS of basses.

EVERY SINGLE ONE of them had dead spots. Some were less noticable that others and the exact location on the neck could vary. But they ALL had dead spots. Bolt-on, neck through, set neck, graphite rods... they ALL have dead spots in my experience.

Looking at the physics behind dead spots I don't understand how it would even be possible to design a resonating wooden instrument such as the bass guitar without any deadspots. Even a device like the Fatfinger, which is designed to "tune out" deadspots, doesn't really remove them. The deadspots are simply moved to other notes.

Yet, hardly a week goes by without reading a NBD thread here on Talkbass where someone says their new bass has "no dead spots".


Which leaves me with these two options:

1) I'm the most unlucky guy ever when it comes to basses and dead spots (plus I must have gotten the science behind deadspots all wrong).

or

2) Lots of people don't really understand what dead spots are. I asked a friend who is a guitar player about this and he thought a dead spot was simply a bad fret. Is this a common misconception?

Anyway, I'm genuinely baffled by the number of claims about "no dead spots" around here, even on the cheapest entry level basses.

So which one is it, 1) or 2)?
Click to expand...

I have had dead spots, but those are mostly caused by the acoustics of the room I’m working in when playing ambiently. I’ve used IEM for over ten years and have not noticed dead spots on either of my basses. If they are there, I sure can’t pick them out. You would think with that kind of isolation, if they were there it would be fairly noticeable.

Granted, I’m not the most observant guy on the face of the planet but that’s the way I here it. As for your situation, I’m not qualified to offer an opinion.
 
#136
Gilmourisgod said:
All my wood basses have deadspots, but my Steinberger, with carbon graphite neck, doesn't seem to. It probably does, if you had some kind of equipment to monitor it, but if I can't hear it, is it there in any way that matters? It wasn't anything I ever noticed until somebody pointed it out. You will NEVER hear an audience member say "dang, too bad about that 1/8th note in the intro that sounded microscopically different than the preceding and subsequent notes, kinda ruined the performance". Fugeddaboudit.
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Lol:thumbsup:
 
#137
It's the wrong term I think, because the notes aren't dead. It's barely noticeable on my main P/J, on the 6th-7th fret , G-string.

It just sounds like there is slightly less fundamental bloom under the note than anywhere else on the neck. But the notes are far from dead, just a bit less powerful in sustain.

So calling them "dead spots" is a bit hyperbolic. But easier to convey than "subtly reduced resonance nodes". I've never noticed an actual dead spot on a bass, nor any severe cases of the reduced resonance.
 
#139
bearfoot said:
It's the wrong term I think, because the notes aren't dead. It's barely noticeable on my main P/J, on the 6th-7th fret , G-string.

It just sounds like there is slightly less fundamental bloom under the note than anywhere else on the neck. But the notes are far from dead, just a bit less powerful in sustain.

So calling them "dead spots" is a bit hyperbolic. But easier to convey than "subtly reduced resonance nodes". I've never noticed an actual dead spot on a bass, nor any severe cases of the reduced resonance.
Click to expand...

Yep I agree, "dead spot" is a misnomer. It's more akin to "sudden note death syndrome".
 
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#140
I’ve had a lot of basses and some electric guitars and still have a decent amount of basses from $109 - 7 k$. The only one with dead spots was my high school Fender precision, mid ‘70’s. Maybe you need an excellent setup guy.
 
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