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Double Bass Wolf Tone Elim.: Effect on Bowed A?
- Thread starter BassiklyAC
- Start date
I am currently trying to get the best setup for my bass, and the story is in a different thread, but this open A wolf topic caught my attention, because I have the same issue while bowing open A string. What I noticed: de-tuning the bass half-tone down fixed it. Therefore, it seems to me like it is a tension issue. It is very difficult to make the A string fully vibrate, it feels too stiff. Currently I have quite regular 115 kg tense string set on the bass. Does anyone have similar experience of fixing the wolf note by possibly using strings with lower tension?
The Aflat/A wolf on my bass was way more pronounced with Flexicores than low-tension Tempera strings. I just took off the Wolf Terminator as an experiment and sadly there was still a very pronounced A node. The bass sounded much more lively though, so I may leave it off for a while and see if I can compensate with my bow.
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Yellow glue and what appears to be a gap between the inside upper end of the bar and the top at 8:56-no thanks.
I tried different eliminators but always hated the overall deadening of the bass and a slower response. They never lasted more than a day. My wolf is pronounced, usually around Ab and spreading south into F#. I set my own posts and sometimes it seems better, sometimes worse. After some years I got used to playing those notes with more preparation. Occasionally one gets away from me or I have to do some creative shifting to mitigate the damage.
Old thread here but as suggested early on in the thread, try a sound post adjustment. Often times a too tight of a post causes the open A string to be hard to speak. I did have a client with wolfs on all A's but got it so it was just on the A harmonic.
I’ve been using a wolf eliminator (just a Lup-X that goes on the afterlengths) for a number of months, and here are some things I’ve learned about how to best maximize its efficacy (mostly lifted from Arnold Schnitzer’s book):
- The first thing is that you can’t ever eliminate a wolf, you can only move it: the goal of all these systems (whether it’s a brass weight, Krentz Modulator, Wolf Terminator, etc.) is to move the wolf to a pitch that is less invasive than where it currently is.
- One of the things I’d heard for years (and struggled with because it didn’t play well with my bass) was that to tune it you want to tune it so that one side of the afterlength is the same as the wolf pitch, just several octaves up. This is actually incorrect: when placed on the string, the eliminator itself vibrates at a specific pitch, and what you’re trying to do is to get that pitch to match your wolf (because sympathetic vibrations are a known way to kill wolfs). The way I found to adjust the eliminator’s pitch is to start by placing the eliminator at the halfway point between the bridge and tailpiece (both sides of the string will sound the same pitch), pluck the eliminator itself to determine the pitch, and and move it towards the bridge or tailpiece to raise the pitch; the midpoint between the bridge and tailpiece is the lowest pitch at which the eliminator will vibrate, so moving the eliminator in either direction will raise the pitch. Arnold says that the pitch you want to target is about a 1/4 step below the wolf pitch because tuning the eliminator to the wolf will move the wolf about a half step below (if you have the very common Ab wolf that means the wolf is now on your open G, which is far less than ideal), which tracks with my experience.
- Moving the eliminator towards the bridge will increase the effect the eliminator has on the overall response of the bass, so if something really funky happens to your bass when the eliminator is close to the bridge, try moving it closer to the tailpiece. I very much had problems with the eliminator close to the bridge (my Ab/A wolf moved to F#, the open A was severely muted, and Bs and Cs started responding real funky), and placing it closer to the tailpiece eliminated most of those problems went away: my open A is pretty much the same volume as my open D and E, the wolf was moved to about G half sharp, and it doesn’t cause anything funky to happen on any new pitches. My open G does need a little more care when I bow it because of the new wolf location, but it needs less care than my open and octave A did before, so that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.
- I couldn’t get the Krentz to play well with my bass, but I suspect that might be more of an issue with my bass and not with the system itself because I’ve played people’s basses where it worked really well.
Wow, this is interesting and an approach I am not familiar with. How exactly does one pluck the wolf eliminator (I have a Lup-X too) to get its sound versus that of the string? I find this a little confusing - as the eliminator is obviously not going to change in mass, I would imagine that its resonant frequency is fixed, but that the string afterlength tuning is the changeable variable. Or is there some interaction in resonance going on with the eliminator and the string afterlength? Or something else?...
The Wolf Terminator absolutely helps (though doesn't entirely solve everything) and it's the only one I know of that you can easily adjust its resonant frequency. Mr. Kamimoto himself set mine up.
Brass weight, Kolstein tailpiece, and Krentz didn't help or made my bass sound dead.
Brass weight, Kolstein tailpiece, and Krentz didn't help or made my bass sound dead.
Pretty sure he's talking about a weight that is used to tune the afterlength:
Hopefully it makes sense now.
Yeah, with one of the brass weights (LupX, New Harmony, etc. doesn't matter which) if you pluck the eliminator itself you will get a defined pitch that is not from the afterlengths and is in the same.
Here's an article that helped me with adjusting a brass weight: The Wolf Tone. Jay VandeKopple does use glass tubes to help the notes "pop" more, but you can still hear the pitch pretty well by plucking the eliminator.
As to how the eliminator itself changes pitch: I genuinely have no idea how it does so, but it does when you move it further away from the center.
Got it! Vandekopple states in the article: "Here we're concerned with motion of the section between the bridge and the saddle at the top of the tailpiece, with that suppressor mass attached (not the pitches of the string sections above or below the suppressor). That unit as a whole will have a frequency that we'd like to match to the wolf note." (emphasis added)
This is fascinating. I'm going to try this when I get home and also expermient with putting the Lup-X on the tailpiece side rather than the bridge side. Thanks!
This is fascinating. I'm going to try this when I get home and also expermient with putting the Lup-X on the tailpiece side rather than the bridge side. Thanks!
The brass weight on the afterlength reflects (partially) the vibration of the string, that is the reason why the string pitch changes with position of the weight.
The weight (but also the spread windings at the afterlength) made the string non-uniform in mass distribution, so the vibrational modes or partials of the underlengths are inharmonic.
Imagine the weight at the very end of the afterlength. It shortens the afterlength mostly by the weight length but is hardly affected because the string vibration is minimal at the ends and so also hardly affects the pitch when the weight is plucked.
The effect of the weight is maximal at the middle (in the lowest vibrational pattern which is most relevant in this case), because string excitation is at its maximum there and needs to move the wright a lot more than at the end.
With the weight close to the bridge you effectively put a weight on the bridge, at the tailpiece you add weight to the tailpiece.
But only experimenting and results count. Background ideas may only get you to better results more quickly (or not if they are wrong).
The weight (but also the spread windings at the afterlength) made the string non-uniform in mass distribution, so the vibrational modes or partials of the underlengths are inharmonic.
Imagine the weight at the very end of the afterlength. It shortens the afterlength mostly by the weight length but is hardly affected because the string vibration is minimal at the ends and so also hardly affects the pitch when the weight is plucked.
The effect of the weight is maximal at the middle (in the lowest vibrational pattern which is most relevant in this case), because string excitation is at its maximum there and needs to move the wright a lot more than at the end.
With the weight close to the bridge you effectively put a weight on the bridge, at the tailpiece you add weight to the tailpiece.
But only experimenting and results count. Background ideas may only get you to better results more quickly (or not if they are wrong).
Just to add my little bit: Moving the bridge did absolutely nothing to the wolf on open A string (I tried string lengths between 102,5 - 104 cm). If you are considering to experiment, I'd say do not move the bridge as the first thing. I also tried to put a firm sponge between A and D for testing purpose. It did help a little bit, although tone was affected. I'll give wolf eliminator a try.
Some anecdotal observations and thoughts as I tried this yesterday -
Flicking the wolf eliminator with my finger definitely yielded a discernable tone (neat!), though it took a little trial and error or rather finding the right technique to yield the tone. However, I experimented just a tiny bit with moving it around to see what was happening, and the pitch generated by flicking the wolf eliminator seemed to match that of the longer section of the bisected afterlength, which I confirmed by also plucking the afterlength on either side of the eliminator. (That said, is there a different pitch I should be listening for?) This was most notable in extreme positions, either close to the bridge or close to the tailpiece, but still held up as I moved the eliminator toward the mid way point, which was where it needed to be to generate the Ab I was looking for.
In moving the eliminator to the new position, the Ab wolf was mitigated about the same, but the other wolfs that I was getting, on Fs for example, are much less pronounced. Now, the G and A are a little more finicky than normal but not nearly as bad as any of the other wolfs were, so I'd call this a net positive for now. Knowing myself, I will probably keep tinkering.
I need to read Mr. VandeKopple's article in more detail, but although I understand that when energized it is the interaction between the wolf eliminator and the string afterlength that generates the sympathetic resonance desired to mitigate the wolf, I still believe that the tuning of the string afterlength is the most important variable. I now hypothesize, however, that a mistake some of us may make (at least, I was doing this, I now realize) in tuning our wolf eliminators is that we're tuning the shorter part of the bisected afterlength. The longer of the two bisected sections will have the stronger resonance and needs to be tuned to the most prominent wolf that occurs absent the use of an eliminator. This could explain why some of us, though we eliminate the wolf, end up with other wolfs that are worse than the one we tried to fix in the first place!
Flicking the wolf eliminator with my finger definitely yielded a discernable tone (neat!), though it took a little trial and error or rather finding the right technique to yield the tone. However, I experimented just a tiny bit with moving it around to see what was happening, and the pitch generated by flicking the wolf eliminator seemed to match that of the longer section of the bisected afterlength, which I confirmed by also plucking the afterlength on either side of the eliminator. (That said, is there a different pitch I should be listening for?) This was most notable in extreme positions, either close to the bridge or close to the tailpiece, but still held up as I moved the eliminator toward the mid way point, which was where it needed to be to generate the Ab I was looking for.
In moving the eliminator to the new position, the Ab wolf was mitigated about the same, but the other wolfs that I was getting, on Fs for example, are much less pronounced. Now, the G and A are a little more finicky than normal but not nearly as bad as any of the other wolfs were, so I'd call this a net positive for now. Knowing myself, I will probably keep tinkering.
I need to read Mr. VandeKopple's article in more detail, but although I understand that when energized it is the interaction between the wolf eliminator and the string afterlength that generates the sympathetic resonance desired to mitigate the wolf, I still believe that the tuning of the string afterlength is the most important variable. I now hypothesize, however, that a mistake some of us may make (at least, I was doing this, I now realize) in tuning our wolf eliminators is that we're tuning the shorter part of the bisected afterlength. The longer of the two bisected sections will have the stronger resonance and needs to be tuned to the most prominent wolf that occurs absent the use of an eliminator. This could explain why some of us, though we eliminate the wolf, end up with other wolfs that are worse than the one we tried to fix in the first place!
