As a few others have said, G-string, 7th fret, is notorious for it. I have it on my Franklin Fender fretless, and to a lesser extent on my Ken Smith 5-string fretless.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
What is a 'dead spot'?
- Thread starter tb-player
- Start date
Wolf tones are a different animal than dead spots. A wolf tone more of a hot spot than a dead spot. One of the worst instruments for wolf tones is upright bass, but there is actually somewhat of a fix for wolf tones. As previously mentioned in another post, wolf tones are more common on bowed instruments. On upright one of the contributing factors of wolf tones is the after-length of string between the bridge and tailpiece. Certain notes can cause the after length to resonate with the note and add some energy to vibrating the bridge / top of the bass. Adding weight or damping the after-length can all but eliminate wolf tones.
By the way, upright basses can have horrendous dead spots also….
I don't do that, but...OK I do, kinda. I play a lot of octaves - when I'm playing a note on the G string, I'm almost always also playing the same note down an octave on the A string, which means that the "area of reduced sustain" on my G string isn't audible in most circumstance, because of how I play.
By the way, given a roasted, graphite reinforced neck and lightweight tuners, the note with the least sustain (at least on the bass I'm playing right now) is the 8th fret on the G string - moving a dead spot very far is not easy, as the math has a square root in it - make a 20% change in stiffness or mass loading, and it only moves the resonance 10%.
Last edited:
I heard rumors that once the rust has settled in even in those parts you touch frequently, you might consider getting new ones a few years down the road.
Yes my Fender has these, in a way -- they are not quite "dead" but not as "alive" as other fretted notes -- the 5th fret on the G of course, and lately the 3rd fret of the E is not as loud as the 5th fret of the E. Time for a new neck? Or perhaps it's the bridge. The strings are only a year old.
Not all dead spots are made equal, but every bass has one to some degree (even composite-necked basses, IME).
Plenty of other responses address the "why" of dead spots. The easy way to tell if/where it is, is to listen for the particular spot where the fundamental drops away faster than the 2nd harmonic. It may be subtle, but that's a pretty normal "dead spot response". If you never play long, legato notes, then you may not notice it. That's the spot where you'll find an octave pedal lose it's head, as the trigger frequency falls off and leaves the harmonic ringing.
I also find it more noticeable in situations with in-ears, subs, and/or a Buttkicker floor pad, where I can literally feel the fundamental drop away more quickly on a dead spot. The same bass through an amp in a live setting may not be as strong, but as soon as the subs are pushing hard, it's easier to feel the drop off.
Plenty of other responses address the "why" of dead spots. The easy way to tell if/where it is, is to listen for the particular spot where the fundamental drops away faster than the 2nd harmonic. It may be subtle, but that's a pretty normal "dead spot response". If you never play long, legato notes, then you may not notice it. That's the spot where you'll find an octave pedal lose it's head, as the trigger frequency falls off and leaves the harmonic ringing.
I also find it more noticeable in situations with in-ears, subs, and/or a Buttkicker floor pad, where I can literally feel the fundamental drop away more quickly on a dead spot. The same bass through an amp in a live setting may not be as strong, but as soon as the subs are pushing hard, it's easier to feel the drop off.
When people say that, what they probably have is a guitar that isn't resonant.
The first bass I had had no dead spots that I was aware of. It also had a tiny headstock. The next was Fender style and had a very slight one. It wasn't a Fender. Ditto the third. The 4th was a Fender, my first, and had an almighty dead spot to the extent you worried your fingers would also die. It was on the 7th fret of this Cowpoke's G string. It could be offset by leaving the D open. I took it back and the second one had less wood filler in the fret slots and was better. I currently have a same year Precision Lyte I just got and I have not noticed a dead spot. Other basses do. Warmoth necks with steel don't stop them.
I'm not sure if it's a myth, but I get the impression that most folks aren't having a problem with dead spots during normal playing. This seems like one of those things where people are looking for them. Like, really looking. Then it gets turned into a debate about whether they technically exist or not.
I'm sure that if I sat in a quiet space and slowly played every note on the board 10x each and listened to how they each rang out, I might find one or 2 that sounded a tiny bit "deader" than the rest,....but,.....why would I do that? Why would anyone?
I never did stuff like that when I played. I was too busy playing and learning songs. Never heard about this dead spot thing until joining TB.
Also, I could be wrong, but it seems like it's most prevalent and in the same general area on one piece (non laminated), bolt-on maple necks with old fashioned truss rods and oversized, non angled HS? Not a fan of that style/design anyway, but even on those, I have to imagine that it's not typically a problem when playing and you'd have to stop playing and hunt for it.
Every undesirable sound I've heard from a bass I've played was due to a bad setup, ratty frets and bad playing.
I'm sure that if I sat in a quiet space and slowly played every note on the board 10x each and listened to how they each rang out, I might find one or 2 that sounded a tiny bit "deader" than the rest,....but,.....why would I do that? Why would anyone?
I never did stuff like that when I played. I was too busy playing and learning songs. Never heard about this dead spot thing until joining TB.
Also, I could be wrong, but it seems like it's most prevalent and in the same general area on one piece (non laminated), bolt-on maple necks with old fashioned truss rods and oversized, non angled HS? Not a fan of that style/design anyway, but even on those, I have to imagine that it's not typically a problem when playing and you'd have to stop playing and hunt for it.
Every undesirable sound I've heard from a bass I've played was due to a bad setup, ratty frets and bad playing.
I'm guessing you've never been in a studio situation where you're hearing raw playback and the bass fundamental just disappears every time you hit a particular string and position on the neck.
It happens. It's a real thing.
This is exactly my point about this silly topic.
I didn't say it wasn't a thing or didn't exist.
And no, I've never been in the situation you describe.
How many people have? Is it an epidemic?
I don't think it is.
I don't believe my basses don't have dead spots. They do. It's physics.
I do believe that they probably don't matter as much as we like to think they do, so I try not to worry about them. Most of the notes resonate well and usually I can avoid the dead spot by playing that note on a different string if that resonance is really important.
If I say something like "no dead spots" what I'm probably meaning is that they aren't horrible.
I do believe that they probably don't matter as much as we like to think they do, so I try not to worry about them. Most of the notes resonate well and usually I can avoid the dead spot by playing that note on a different string if that resonance is really important.
If I say something like "no dead spots" what I'm probably meaning is that they aren't horrible.
While I am skeptical of that, given the physics discussed, the fact that Dingwalls are multi scale might change things enough that there isn't a sharply defined dead spot. That would be very cool.
Why the need by some to be pedantic about this dead spot stuff?
Why this need to constantly reiterate "well, even if you don't notice them, hear them, or have a problem with them, they technically still exist".....um, what?
If someone doesn't have a problem with dead spots, they don't have a problem with dead spots.
I don't have a polar bear problem either.
Notice, I didn't say they don't exist, or that some people don't have a polar bear problem. I didn't say that if I made the room really quiet and got super powered binoculars, I wouldn't possibly see a polar bear from reeeally far away.
I said I don't have a problem. And I've seen a bunch of other people say they don't have a problem. And if I had a bass that had such a bad dead spot problem that it jumped out while playing, or made recordings sound like crap, I'd probably get rid of it and buy a better bass. Just like I'd probably move if I had a polar bear problem.
If you have a problem with dead spots or polar bears, I'm sorry to hear that. I believe you. But I don't. So if it's all the same to you, I'm not going to worry about it.
Why this need to constantly reiterate "well, even if you don't notice them, hear them, or have a problem with them, they technically still exist".....um, what?
If someone doesn't have a problem with dead spots, they don't have a problem with dead spots.
I don't have a polar bear problem either.
Notice, I didn't say they don't exist, or that some people don't have a polar bear problem. I didn't say that if I made the room really quiet and got super powered binoculars, I wouldn't possibly see a polar bear from reeeally far away.
I said I don't have a problem. And I've seen a bunch of other people say they don't have a problem. And if I had a bass that had such a bad dead spot problem that it jumped out while playing, or made recordings sound like crap, I'd probably get rid of it and buy a better bass. Just like I'd probably move if I had a polar bear problem.
If you have a problem with dead spots or polar bears, I'm sorry to hear that. I believe you. But I don't. So if it's all the same to you, I'm not going to worry about it.
Sorry. I have to disagree. I spent to much of my late morning/early afternoon pulling basses off my wall and checking for dead spots. My FSOs all had them to a greater or lesser degree, the Fenders being the worst. My full hollow bodies did not. A few of my solid-bodies did not. Oddly enough, my Supro Violin basses (solid) and my Multivox Marvel basses (chambered) both are dead spot free, and the only thing they have in common is that neither has a truss rod (and yes, I played the full length of the neck, or at least the 5th-9th frets on the G to be sure, on all the basses I checked.) In this respect the Marvels, budget as they are, truly are a marvel: most even note response along and across the strings I have ever encountered on an electric bass. Which I have mentioned in other posts to TB.
I started playing in late 1965 and by 1969 was ready to chuck bass entirely, solely because of dead spot frustration. Ever since then the first thing I look for in a bass is dead spots, and I look hard.
