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This is what a "Dead Spot" sounds like

#41
mongo2 said:
Yep. It's yet another way that the wood matters.
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Now look who's trolling. :rollno:

Anyway, to what John said.... Yep, I love the slightly uneven tone to a good vintage bass. "Character" is the right word. It's similar to how we humans tend to prefer the sound of analog recordings (which have subtle harmonic distortion) over purely digital recordings (which are flawlessly clean and accurate).
 
#42
Playing my 6 string bass I can hear no dead spots. Y'all ain't got enough strings. That causes too much stress on the G string and it freaks out at the 5-7 frets, frequency overload and not enough companion strings to help that poor lil fellow carry the load imposed on it. :hiding: :D
 
#43
GODSBASSMAN said:
Playing my 6 string bass I can hear no dead spots. Y'all ain't got enough strings. That causes too much stress on the G string and it freaks out at the 5-7 frets, frequency overload and not enough companion strings to help that poor lil fellow carry the load imposed on it. :hiding: :D
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You're not far off. I do think the different mass of a 5-string or 6-string neck completely changes the deadspot resonance problem. I've never played a 5 or 6 with an overtly noticeable deadspot.
 
#44
GODSBASSMAN said:
Playing my 6 string bass I can hear no dead spots. Y'all ain't got enough strings. That causes too much stress on the G string and it freaks out at the 5-7 frets, frequency overload and not enough companion strings to help that poor lil fellow carry the load imposed on it. :hiding: :D
Click to expand...

IME, key elements are the mass and stiffness of the neck wood.

However, I've had some heavy 34" sale necks that had deadspots but were fairly flexible.

My best 34" scale neck in the deadspot department is a very light all maple neck from Allparts that happened to be very stiff.

Edit: I've found an easy to find deadspots and hotspots is to play with distortion. It really makes them jump out.
 
#45
johnk_10 said:
9 times out of 10 you'll feel the neck shake when playing a dead spot. that's where the energy is going. rather than remaining rigid and the note ringing out, the neck becomes a 'shock absorber'.
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Yah. I've noticed something similar in the body, as well. I'll feel more resonance in the body's wood, against my abdomen, at a dead spot.

The worst bass I've owned, for a dead spot, was an early '70s Tele bass, back in the day. I didn't keep it long, because it was so frustrating. IIRC, it was even worse than the recording Dan put up.

(And a big HT to Dan, for his threads on bass construction and tone! Most excellent additions to the TB knowledge archive. :bassist:)
 
#46
bass players through the ages went through a LOT of changes trying to eliminate those...as did the bass itself, including the whole neck-through craze...

Physics...a tough thing to overcome.

Cheers,
Cameron


-=DanAtkinson=- said:
Some folks have wondered what a "dead spot" sounds like. Well here you go. This is about as bad as they come. A customer of mine brought me this 2006 MIM P bass with a nasty deadspot. As usual, it's on the 7th fret of the G string.

In this audio clip you'll hear 2 normal notes on the G string, and then the dead D note: http://www.atkinsonbasses.com/storage/deadspot.mp3

Here's a picture of the waveform:

deadspot.jpg
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#49
-=DanAtkinson=- said:
I do think the different mass of a 5-string or 6-string neck completely changes the deadspot resonance problem. I've never played a 5 or 6 with an overtly noticeable deadspot.
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bzzzt.

My 5-string Ibanez ATK305 came with a wicked dead spot, in the usual place.

I figured it was just my bass, until I picked up another one, and it was the same.
 
#50
FYI, based on someone else's experience, I converted the neck joint on the ATK to threaded inserts. No change whatsoever.

Next, I tightened a couple of loose machine head shafts. That reduced the width of the dead spot, but didn't eliminate it. Next, I'm going to try weights on the headstock.
 
#51
Dear Danny & The Dead Spots,

here is an anomoly i would like to hear you address. i posted this on a similar topic thread. input from anyone with a similar experience is appreciated. TIA
pacojas said:
alright...., enough about dead spots!!!!

i had a bass that the D#, on the 1st fret of the D string, would explode off of the neck. it was a heavy Fender pbass with a brass nut. i hated using that note as it had a very non-linear output vs the other notes.*

is there a proper explaination and name for this effect?!!! are notes at the nut prone to higher output because of the close proximity of the nut & tuners?!!! possibly a knot or increased wood density.*

(i know.... start your own thread)

meh.... forget about it! :/
Click to expand...
 
#53
pacojas said:
Dear Danny & The Dead Spots,

here is an anomoly i would like to hear you address. i posted this on a similar topic thread. input from anyone with a similar experience is appreciated. TIA
Click to expand...

The effect could be a called a "wolf tone" if you wanted to use DB parlance. It's caused by resonances and it "howls" hence the term I s'pose. For DBs there are wolf tone eliminators (pictured below) that attach the string between the tailpiece and bridge having varying degrees of success in eliminating or reducing the wolf tone but I'm aware of no such device for an EB. Nor would I expect such a device to work on EBs since EBs and DBs are such different animals, the cause of the hotspot in the EB is most likely due to different resonance sources within the neck and/or body.

Link Removed

Is it only when played amplified? If it also happens unplugged, have you made sure everything is tight on the bass? Sometimes loose hardware can vibrate at specific frequencies and be a PITA to track down, or maybe the trussrod is vibrating sympathetically. Shot in the dark, I know, but it's not hard to check.
 
#54
touji said:
So I've been playing those dead spot notes without knowing that they were dead spots till now. Well damn!
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I didn't realize how much I had been unconsciously finessing all the minor dead spots and wolf notes on my 64 P-bass, until I built a super-even neck-thru w/carbon fibre neck reinforcements, etc.

In some ways, it didn't have as much character as the Fender, but the first time I picked it up, and realized that I didn't have to hit certain notes differently any more, was a big "aha moment" for me.
 
#55
In a former career in the ultrasonics field, we used to design titanium "welding horns" that would resonate at a very specific frequency (the resonant frequency!) We could design it with some sophisticated Cad and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software so that the piece would "ring" at a specified frequency (ultrasonic typically 20k - 40k). It was pretty predictable, but we were using a solid isolated slug of nearly pure titanium. I would think a bass neck/body etc would be much more unpredictable with all those variables, but as Dan illustrated, usually in the same general frequency range. By the way, everything has a resonant frequency, even people. We used to do a little demo for visiting customers where we would take a large block of gelatin, and vibrate it at it's resonant frequency until it would literally self destruct. Good fun! I miss that job...
 
#56
#57
Great post! Thanks Dan. You did a great job of demonstrating the phenomena of a dead note, and the visual shot, along with your sound clip was very interesting. It's a booger of an annoyance to deal with, when you get a bass that's got a bad spot or two. I've had my share.
 

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