After a bit of a hiatus I’ve restarted B2B and made it to the slap bass module, which is where I stopped last time. I actually felt like I was making some progress, reasonable tone, mostly hitting the right strings when suddenly boom! My volume jacked up to full and scared the bejeezus out of our cats. At first I thought I must have knocked the volume knob but actually the volume control on my (Ibanez) bass seems to have effectively become an on/off switch. Instead of a nice linear increase in volume as I turn it , it now goes straight from off to full with almost nothing in between (I can hear a ramp up if I’m very careful but it’s about 1 degree of turn).
The knob itself feels fine so I guess it’s some kind of electronics issue. Has anyone had anything similar? Does it sound like something that could be fixed at home or do I need to take it in to a shop?
Can I sue Josh for not putting a suitable warning on the Slap Bass lessons?! (j/k )
Checkmate!
Go though the possible check list here
Roll every knobs off. Then start again. If you have the bass boost or treble boost all the way up that could ruin the day.
Is it in tune? You have no idea if the strings doesn’t have enough tension it’s really loud.
Check the amp knobs
Check the pickup height if it’s too close to the strings that could be it.
Check the battery or try swapping the battery
You mention slapping, where does your thumb make contact to the strings, at the last few frets or directly above the pickup?
You can’t sue BassBuzz, but you can sue Larry Graham. He is ultimately the party responsible for slap, and you can direct all slap-related injury/abuse/volume/taste issues to him and his Slap Legal Activity Partnership.
In a more serious tone - it sounds like batteries to me too?
I’d change batteries and see if the volume doesn’t become a normal volume knob again.
(Assuming the Ibanez has active pickups that take a battery. If they don’t, disregard this very unhelpful advice.)
Yeah, I checked all the knobs, adjusted the pickup balance etc and everything seems normal except for the volume. I tried with my headphone amp and got the same results so have ruled out the amp as the problem. Although my slapping seems to have brought about the problems, regular plucking is also affected.
Changing the battery didn’t help, though the new one might have been sat around in its box for a while so I’ll try a brand new one before I give up and send it in for repair.
You might have a loose connection somewhere. Or perhaps hitting the strings to the pole pieces of the pick up did something.
Hope you get it fixed soon.
Fixed!
Apparently, something had just come loose inside. The shop tightened everything up for me and only charged £5.
Now to get back to slapping