I finally picked up my first bass. It’s a SQUIER CONTEMPORARY ACTIVE JAZZ BASS HH V. Picked it up because it felt the most comfortable. It sounds rather “full” and “heavy” which I liked. I paired with a Katana 110 amp.
After playing for a few days I noticed something I didn’t like. After muting the strings I get this reverby type sound that sounds “robotic” and “hollow”. I’ve tried playing around with all the setting and knobs in the bass as well as the amp. Nothing seemed to get rid of it. I plugged the bass into an audio interface and the sound is still there. So…I’m not sure if it’s supposed to sound like of if there’s something going on with the pickups or the strings.
The bass wasn’t set-up from the shop I bought it from. From what I can see, the spacing of the strings is not too bad.
Hi @Ferd, welcome to the forums! Any chance you could share a recording of this sound you’re hearing? Based on the description alone, it’s kind of hard to understand what’s going on.
Hi all, I really appreciate your answers. I’ll answer all your suggestions and attempt a recording so you hear what is going on. I reckon I’ll take it to the guitar shop I bought it from. The bass wasn’t even from a box. It was the last one they had. The strings are probably not good because of that. But I presume the problem might be the pickups/electronics. This particular bass has had some issues from what I could tell looking at searches around the net.
@John_E strings weren’t changed. They should have been given that the bass was a display bass (not brand new from the box)
@Paul_9207 I tried this but the ringing is still there at all frets
@Wombat-metal all strings but most noticeable on the D string
@mpops1990 perhaps. This bass is trying to do a bit too much. I didn’t know much when I was buying and didn’t do my research. I wish I could have gotten either a precision bass or a straight up jazz bass.
Again, thank you all. I will record my terrible playing soon and upload something. Can I upload mp3 files in the site? Any suggestions on where to upload files?
I will be taking it to the shop this weekend but it would be awesome if I could understand what potentially is the root cause so the same doesn’t happen.
The ringing harmonics seems to come from muting techniques, bass usually played one note at a time you need to mute the rest of the notes from all other strings or it will ring like that.
Next, is your tone knobs seems to be wide open which makes the issue more problematic.
Also sounded like you are fretting (left hand) the note pretty hard and when you miss, the rattles is quite loud.
I’ll post the link to a muting exercise when I’m at work.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I will have to improve my muting technique. I also thought the action in the bass is a bit high which makes me press down harder to compensate when fretting. Either way, a technique problem will be solved with more practice on my end and I’ll need to understand the controls better. I’m happy the gear is fine.
really enjoying learning bass.