Fretless Bass Fingering Pressure Question

Technique
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Hi! I’m having trouble finding an answer elsewhere on the internet, so I thought I’d see if the wonderful folks at BB had anything to say on the matter.

I just picked up a fretless jazz bass, my first fretless. It seems like there’s a dullness to the D and G strings based on whether I’m using the pad of my fingers (like I would on a fretted bass) vs using my finger tips. This isn’t happening on the E or A strings. It’s almost a muted vs non-muted sound, or perhaps has less sustain when plucking the strings.

Is this normal? Have my frets been helping me cover up sloppier technique than I thought I had? I’m not used to playing with solely my fingertips, but I have heard that you want the bone of your finger on the string as much as possible when playing a double bass, for instance.

Any searches for fretless fingerings have more to do with intonation than actual finger pressure. Any advice you have would be really helpful!

For background, this is an '06 Squier VM Jazz Bass with flats, purchased used.

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My first reaction to this is that those 2 strings are dying or dead. If you “fret” the note the same way they should produce similar tone. Since it’s an 18 year old used bass there’s a small chance that the strings were kinked somewhere along the way.

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Thanks Al. That thought crossed my mind, but they’re apparently new strings that were strung with a “professional” setup before I purchased it.

Granted, “professional” and “new” can be highly subjective terms when buying something used :sweat_smile:

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I don’t trust them anymore.

:joy: There are very few places I’d go have have anything done on my basses nowadays. I browsed a few shop while the “tech” are working on the customers instruments. Some it looked like no care were taken at all when removing strings the ball ends would impact the body beautiful paint job. There’s no stretching once the string is installed and tuned, it’s done. All of this of course happened while helping customers.

This particular place is family owned and been there for decades, that couldn’t navigate a simple (enough) pickup installation. I dropped off my bass to do the mix EMG and non EMG pickup both are passive a month later, I called to follow up and their “lead Tech” master luthier at Fender said it could not be done. You can’t mix EMG with anything else, :scream: I took it home and got it done in 20 minutes learning everything along the way for the first time.

Maybe it’s time you change them yourself.

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