E-A 'clack' example

Technique
1

@JoshFossgreen thanks for offering to take a look:

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2

Likely unrelated but thing that I noticed is from this angle it looks like your front pickup is very high. Are you touching it with your fingers while plucking?

In my experience new basses often ship with pickups dialed out to maximum height. This is not usually what you want.

Might want to check the distance from the string to the pickup against what it says in the manual.

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3

Around :50s in when you tap on the string to the pickup you can see what @howard suggesting.
That pickup does seem too close.
Can you tell if the clack is coming form the fretboard or the pickup?

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4

I agree with what everyone else suggested but I’m going to throw in another thing… it’s a long shot, but I’m gonna toss it out there anyway.

It sounded to me like your fingernail was clipping the string. Maybe try filing down (or trimming) the nails on your plucking fingers?

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5

This happens to me all the time.

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6

Thanks everyone! From my vantage point above the bass with stereo ears, it’s coming from the upper frets, and if I fret around the 3rd fret it goes away. But I do feel like the low pickups are stopping me from plucking across. I may try to dial them down.

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7

The manual should tell you the ideal height. If not you can probably google it for your bass model. Or just do what I do and do it by feel and tone :slight_smile:

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8

I’m 99% sure this was a truss rod issue. I think it was back bowed a bit. After everyone’s suggestions I wanted to make sure it was up in the 1st/2nd fret area, but I think it was a bit lower … I mean ‘higher’. I gave it a quarter turn of relief and the symptoms diminished quite a bit.

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9

Thanks for the video @David_Anderson , much easier to diagnose!

I think I agree with @howard - from that angle, the front pickup looks insanely close to the strings. You should be able to dig in pretty hard, and even do clacky downward Steve Harris plucks, without smacking the pickups too easily.

That’d be my first thing I’d try… but if you were in backbow with the trussrod, that could have contributed to.

Technique-wise, I think the way you’re plucking is great normally, and the bass just needs some tweaking to acommodate.

The way you plucked upwards at 0:36 is great example of “pulling up and away” that I always tell everybody not to ever do - definitely don’t let the bass make you pluck like that! :stuck_out_tongue:

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10

Not analysing your issue as Josh already did. Just wanted to throw out a reminder:
Check the intonation of your bass after adjusting the truss rod.

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11

Thanks, I got them dialed down to the recommended heights. I guess I read somewhere the L2000s pups were high and hot, but you’re right, this was interfering.

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