I was learning a new finger exercise, going real…slow. One note at a time, and then I got to “E” on the G string. For some reason, E sounded so loud compared to the other notes…it seemed to resonate somehow. It just froze me there because it was so distracting.
So, I move up a fret and down a fret, and those notes are not as strong and sustaining like E was. I thought, “Ok, let’s octave up to the A string.” Same phenomenon. All the other strings are muted, why does E seem so resonate, so strong, sustaining, like it wants to bore through my head? Other E’s on the fret board do the same thing, but the higher ones are more noticeable. It’s as if there’s some harmonic in play…
Ok, I decided to grab my other bass, a Squier. Same thing. E is really strong. Both basses are PJ basses using only the P pup.
Anyone notice this before? Could this be something with my amp…or the P Bass? My ear maybe?
It could be that the E notes are causing a resonant frequency in the room you play in that makes them jump out to your ear
you could try playing in another room or at least in another spot in the room to see if anything changes
Pretty funny moment in their San Francisco show I was at when they popped the “Anyone got any Vera’s?” line and the crowd pelted them with about two dozen packs of rolling paper. “Whoa LOTS of Vera’s! “
I have this same problem. There seems to be certain notes that just rattle my whole room. I’ll be playing a song then "BWAAAAAAAAAM " and everything in my room rumbles (in my case B on the A string). No amount of compression or what have you seems to fix it but moving the amp around and some EQ on the amp itself seems to help a bit.
As someone told me in a different thread: guitar settings and pedals for tone, Amp EQ for the room.
It’s probably the room… for me it’s G, all of them but worst for the low G… if you want to be sure try playing thru headphones, if it’s the room it will not happen
Well, I changed everything. I unboxed the new Ampeg…in another room, and plugged in my bass. That definitely altered that strong resonance. Not as strong, and it seemed to be more on “D” than anything.
Then I took the suggestion of plugging in headphones, and that completely leveled all the notes. They all had the same report; no note sounded any heavier than any other note. Fascinating!
Agree with the replies as folks stated: environmental conditions, room acoustics, resonance, et.al. … but it seems that using the headphone provided more feedback to your question
I will add one other item- the human factor. Everyone’s physical head and ear structure, while similar among almost all humans, is still different from everyone else which in-turn could cause varied human interpretation and subjectivity to any sound.
What you hear could be different from what I hear.
Human factor reality:
I lost a majority of my hearing in my left ear about 5 years ago. It happened in a very short time span of about 6 weeks or so. The hearing with which I am left has no clarity, but I can still hear sounds.
As a result of this I almost had to “re-learn” how to hear AND listen; things sound differently to me now compared to before it happened… but not necessarily in a bad way.
