Why are some notes so loud compared to others?

[froglips]

Oh, and I have a glitter red 2006 American made Fender P-Bass, and a Victor Bailey signature model acoustic Bass. The amp is an Ampeg 250W 15". I am 100% positive that the problems are not being caused by the actual instruments' workmanship or materials. Just some minor set up issues, and the other stuff you guys have mentioned.

Again, thanks for all the help, folks!

 

[dfp]

dug this up b/c the topic was on my mind, wondered what others had to say...

in my experience, as a totally separate issue from boomy rooms i have experienced what i see as the opposite of dead spots on some basses.

when i noticed it most was when slapping on certain very inexpensive basses, notes around the 7th fret to the 12th fret (maybe higher too?) would be boomy and my clip light would come on, or even when recording direct (no room sound) there would be a distortion to the sound of those notes if slapped or popped.

so certain basses were useless for trying to play certain slap lines.

fingerstyle, these basses sounded really fine, but if you were listening closely you might hear the difference slightly. slapping made it obvious.

i love cheap basses b/c i know, above a certain floor of quality, i can make them sound good to my and most ears, and i can afford to try new things, but it's hard to find one that has a truly even sound... i guess there's bound to be some trade off b/c the woods used are probably less than ideal "tone woods".

i guess better wood will dampen or not dampen the noticeable frequencies of the instrument more uniformly, and thus the instrument's response will be more even across the board.

as opposed to the Fender dead spot thing, which seems to be a phenomenon of the specific relationship between typical Fender body mass, typical Fender neck mass, and the specific frequencies basses are traditionally tuned to (drop tune your dead spot afflicted Fender to DGCF and see if the dead spot doesn't improve! in some cases greatly).

this is all just best guesses, wondering out loud.

 

[PikeoftheLake]

I'm glad you dug this up dfp. There doesn't seem to be much out there on this phenomena outside of this thread.

I have a Lakland 5 string P bass that was beautifully consistent throughout the scale with the Joe Osborne flats. I changed to Tomastik flats and all of a sudden notes are louder in the frequencies from around C-D and quieter from around F-A. This is most noticable on the E string but also reproduces on all other strings.

It's happened at my house and at my rehearsal space as well. Tried messing with the pickups with a bit of success but the problem still prevails. I'll try messing with EQ on my amp and maybe try a different amp tonight to see if that teases out the problem.

 

[steelhead2]

what i'm going thru is; i practise in a small bedroom or the living room; WAY dif!,,when you can open it up(EQ every string to be clean clear crisp tonally)it's like in a 12 ft room it's tough,,,pedals can add weird`dead frets' semi dead actually,or i've had odd times when a bass will REALLY get noticably louder around the oh?,,,what? 8th fret? on the A string

anyway,,i'd try an amp with lots of headroom in as big a room as you can find,`open it up' tonally with amp and volume knobs on instrument,no effects of any kind,that should tell the tale of truthi havent been playing bass very long compared to many here but i've been thru several combo amps and for me; buying a large wattage head was like a new beginning= really opened my eyes tonally about what was possible

i'm not saying it's you but i struggled with amps that had 100 watts and 150 watts(SState),especially with pedals,,,witch i love but give me a clean honest 500 watts in a decent size room and every string will ring clear,,ok like last night i jammed with a fuzz pedal and my combo amp,seemed like i wasn't 100% happy with A versus D string tones and half the E string was`quieter' but hey!,,had to have that heavy FUZZ

anyway,hope i didn't cornfuse anyone too bad house full of grandkids hyped on candy bars(i guess? i have to go outside where it's calm) peace man keep us posted what you find

 

[knuckle_head]

If you have a balanced tension string set you have even string vibration and even output - you can play with similar technique on all strings and level off the slanted pickups.

. . . my $.02