Fret board noise

I agree with most everything that has been stated already, however, I tend to agree mostly along the lines of what @eric.kiser and @Gio said.
To me it sounds normal. I do often play un amped and unplugged, just playing in my chair with nothing, so I hear a lot of the noises I play.
Like @John_E stated, when I play amped, I tend to turn down the treble and boost the bast a bit, or I should say I start with everything cut and will boost the bass about mid way, and then just a touch of treble to suite the tone I am going after. You can achieve this similarly with a tone knob, just have to dial it to the right side of the tone spectrum to cut the highs down and let the bass ring thru. That said, I mostly play a 2 band pre-amp.
If I play with a tone knob, O start all the way CW (cut) and add to my desired tone. If using a 3 band, same idea, I play with everything cut, and add about 50% bass, and a touch of miss and treble to suit. usually about 20% treble and anywhere from 0 to 40% miss, depending on what I am playing. But that is just a starting point, and useless when playing unplugged.

When you listen to lots of baselines once they are taken away from the mix, you will hear all sorts of sounds that you wouldn’t expect when you are first playing, but when it goes in the mix and with effects (or with no fx, pun intended) it is not noticeable.

There are lots of ways to hear examples of this, but one of the easiest would be to watch the YouTube channel BassCovers. He usually / always puts one cover of Bass only and one cover with his baseline mixed into the song.

I think I first discovered this when I was first trying to learn songs amplified and I just thought I sounded horrible. It was not that I sounded great, but comparably speaking, I didn’t sound so far off to what was played by the YouTube player, with nothing but dry baseline amplified, with no distorted or modulated effects, just some pre-amp adjusting.

Then you can find examples of famous old rockers from famous bands of famous songs where they break out just the bass part, and although it sounds fabulous, it often sounds way noisier then you would expect to hear.

That said, soloists and jazz players, play for years and train for this specifically, and still can’t completely reduce the noises, live, beyond what you can do with exceptional skill an technique, neither of which I have got.
But I can sound pretty good in a mix when I cover a song, IMO. I do hear every last mistake when I play it back, but when I listen to it reasonably, like in the car with window down and just let it play like I were listening to the song itself, and don’t focus on my playing, it doesn’t sound all that bad. Its not the studio version, but it doesn’t sound half bad if I get the take right.

it is true, I do hear more clacking with flats, not so much twang, more of clacking, but I do not think that the difference with your example would make much difference if it were flats vs rounds. a little, but not much.
and that clacking is mostly from playing unplugged, once it is amplified, the clacking goes away if the highs are not too prominent

3 Likes