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Strings got tighter by themselves?

R

Rane

Guest
Oct 11, 2012
13
0
Ireland
#1
I have a brand new Ibanez Mikro bass. This is the first bass I have had in many years. When I got the bass, I tuned it with my Boss tuner. I then played it for a few days until I noticed it sounded out of tune and went to tune it again. I did not touch the machine heads inbetween tunings. When I went to tune it, I had to loosen all the strings a little to get them back in tune.

This makes no sense to me. How did my strings get tighter by themselves? Surely they would get looser as you play them. Or does humidity play a part in how the strings act? I'm really confused as I expected to have to tighten the strings up, not the other way around.
 
#4
northernmonkey said:
Or the temperature. Strings will contract as you cool them.
Click to expand...

A few weeks ago I was playing in church on the first really cool day of fall this year. When I went to tune up all my strings were sharp and I had the thought that maybe I should leave them as is but I retuned anyway. Sure enough the singers start to show up for the pre-service run through and one of the women looks just miserable in the cool auditorium so they turn up the heat. I could hear my bass going flat in the middle of the first service as the room warmed but I had no way to retune other than by guess and by golly until the break between services. I bought a headstock tuner the next day! :D

I tune my bass every time I get it out to play it. It doesn't always need it and when it does it usually doesn't need much. Tuning that drifts from minute to minute is a problem, tuning that drifts from day to day is normal. Symphony orchestras typically play some very fine instruments yet they will tune extensively before a concert, at intermission, and sometimes during the breaks between songs. There is nothing wrong with a bass that needs a tuning tweak every day and if you play in an environment with wild temperature swings a perfectly good bass might need tuning several times during a concert.

Ken
 
#5
Temperature and humidity will affect the strings a bit but even more so the neck if the changes are great enough. It's not at all uncommon for an instrument to go a bit sharp in between tunings just sitting there in it's stand. My guitars do it all the time and so do my basses.

When you re-tune always drop below the target pitch and tune up to it, never down. That way you'll relax the excess string and neck tension first and you'll hit your target pitch more easily and more accurately.
 
#9
I have two humidity scales in my practice room and keep it between 55 - 60% at all times. If I am away for a day or two, my dehumidifier gets full and shuts off the room will go to 65% and I'll notice a fairly big difference in tuning. Get it back down to 55% and voila! All is back to normal.
 
#10
Even in the same room where my basses hang on the walls, just taking one down to play it I get the strings to go sharp. The higher up the wall the hanger is, the warmer it is.

Heat rises in a room, so I tune in a lower/cooler zone not as high as the bass was and then since I run through my Korg 'Cylon Eye' tuner 100% of the time, I can just watch the strings wander until they stabilize after a few minutes.

It's a physical law - heat makes strings relax and cool tightens them up.

Funny though that in the past year since I moved here to Montana, none of my necks have needed any truss adjustments at all. The settings and adjustments I have here in Montana are the same as they were in the high desert of Southern California.

I'm not seeing the weather or the seasons moving any of my necks at all - not even the GFS necks. For me, necks moving due to humidity changes are a myth.
 
#11
Rane said:
I have a brand new Ibanez Mikro bass. This is the first bass I have had in many years. When I got the bass, I tuned it with my Boss tuner. I then played it for a few days until I noticed it sounded out of tune and went to tune it again. I did not touch the machine heads inbetween tunings. When I went to tune it, I had to loosen all the strings a little to get them back in tune.

This makes no sense to me. How did my strings get tighter by themselves? Surely they would get looser as you play them. Or does humidity play a part in how the strings act? I'm really confused as I expected to have to tighten the strings up, not the other way around.
Click to expand...

Congratulations, you have just discovered the laws of physics. It has nothing to do with humidity, but it does with temperature.

When you play the bass, your fingers warm the strings. Warm metal expands (or in this case, slacks slightly) so you have tuned the strings in their slack mode.

When you sit the bass down, the strings cool off. Metal contracts as it cools, meaning the strings get tighter. Tighter strings are higher in pitch. Pick up the bass after the strings have cooled, and it's usually just slightly above pitch.

The other thing you will observe is that with brand new strings, while the bass is sitting, they stretch. In this case, they will be below pitch when you pick it up next time. But after a few months, strings usually stop doing this.
 

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