Please help with this one. I have an Ibanez SR 750, a Fender Rumble 150 amp, and half round strings. My E string is seriously waaaaaay louder than the other 3 strings. Why? Is it a setting on my amp? The bass? The strings? Ive tried adjusting stuff and there is no change. What would cause this? Im baffled. Any suggestions?
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Why is my E string significantly louder than the other 3 strings?
- Thread starter JayBass69
- Start date
Does stuff include EQ tweaks ? Strings ? It is not unheard of to get significant variation is strings in a package as well...
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Thank you for your replies Gents. Ok, stuff would not include adjusting the pick ups. That I haven't done. After your responses, I was thinking about it more. This appears to be more of a recent problem, since going back to this amp. So something has changed. I haven't changed the strings, nor adjusted anything significant on the bass. I just (now, prior to this post) played on my small 15 watt practice amp and the sound coming off of all 4 strings sounds equal. So, based on what you guys have said, Im thinking it must be an amp issue. The last major gig I played with that amp was an outdoor Halloween party and some really smoking Hot chick jumped on stage and started shakin her money maker, which of course couldn't be excepted by other less attractive women at the party.... so... another gal pushed her into the pool that the band was set up near. She of course was splashing our equipment. Maybe that coupled with a lot of moisture/humidity in the October air changed something? Blew something out internally? Or, its the settings I have currently on the amp? But if its the settings, why would it make "one" string so blatantly louder than the rest? Any additional suggestions is appreciated. Thank you
many times amp makers voice their amps/cabinets to emphasize the lower frequencies, often around the 40 Hz range of the E string or the 80 Hz 1st harmonic of the E string. So it may very well be your amp--but you should be able to control that with EQ and/or adjusting the pickup height under the E string.
Tom
Tom
trevtdogg
Guest
- Mar 28, 2015
- 21
- 3
- Disclosures
- i play in the melbourne grunge rock band charm: www.charm.bandcamp.com
if the sound coming out of you bass is currently balanced well then i would NOT adjust the pickups to fix this - it will work short term, but then if you want to use someone else's amp or backline one day you'll run into the reverse problem. not to mention it's not really fixing the real problem.
i agree though it sounds like an amp eq issue. i would play through a few different amps first if you can and see for sure if the sound coming out of you bass from the current pick up heights is even and balanced. when you tested it on a small amp, it might have struggled to produce the lows from your e string and over compensated for the imbalance.
if you have a mini disc recorder, or mp3 recorder or PC recording program and can plug directly into the device and record it, then listen back on good speakers / stereo that you know well to be balanced - that will give you a good indication of how balanced the pick ups are.
once you have a balanced signal coming out of the bass, start with a flat eq on the amp and adjust to suit your taste. i personally prefer the subtraction method, by taking away what there is too much of rather than boosting what there isn't enough of, it gives a more natural full sound rather than an artificial scuplted over-eq'd type sound. you then might have to turn up louder with this method. also try adjusting the tone knob(s) on your bass to see if that helps to find your sound if the amp and eq on the amp aren't quite doing it for you.
also, it's very common for bass amps and bass cabs to have purposely designed eq curve spikes around certain frequencies so that it sounds "good" and "bassy" and "has nice low end" etc. sometimes this is done in an unnatural way, and can become obvious depending on the combination of equipment you are running. nothing you can really do to fix this but try and eq it out with on board eq, tone controls, and eq / tone pedals.
A conpressor with metering can help narrow down whether or not it is the pickup as well. You can do this by lowering the threshold and seeing which open strings clamp down and trigger the led into the "red". If its not the pickup, you'll get pretty even limiting from string to string. Granted, you may not have a compressor with that capability, but its a trick I use to help set pickup height and works pretty well. Does your bass's preamp have trim pots for frequncy adjustments? It's most likely an EQ issue at the amp itslef, but if that winds up being ruled out, it could be worth investigating the trim pot settings if applicable.
It could also be that your Rumble 150 puts out significantly more bass than your previous 15 watt practice combo. Even playing the same amp (w/ the same eq settings) considerably louder will make your tone sound bassier. So I wouldn't draw any unshakeable conclusions based on the perception that the strings sounded even through your 15 watt practice amp.
For troubleshooting, can you take the amp out of the equation? What does the bass sound like via DI into a mixer or recording interface? If the E string is loud into a mixer, then I'd start w/ the pickup adjustment. OTOH, if the bass sounds even string-to-string into a mixer, I'd look downstream.
For troubleshooting, can you take the amp out of the equation? What does the bass sound like via DI into a mixer or recording interface? If the E string is loud into a mixer, then I'd start w/ the pickup adjustment. OTOH, if the bass sounds even string-to-string into a mixer, I'd look downstream.
