Not sure what’s going on but recently as I have been recording myself I’ve noticed some issues with the volume output, mainly on my A string. I noticed it really badly in my most recent cover of “Heroes” by David Bowie, there’s some chugging on C on the A string and when I play it back those C’s are extremely subdued. You can hear the note but it’s way quieter than the rest of the notes.
I haven’t changed any of my gear, cables, etc…I tried unplugging everything and going bass straight into my DAI and that didn’t work. No idea what’s going on. Issue with the pickups maybe? Anyone have any insight or should I take it into a shop? Thanks!
My first thought is the A string has started going dead faster than the other strings. They don’t all degrade at the same rate. Same thing happened on one of mine recently. I just adjusted my compressor and kept on rockin’.
Never hurts to double check pickup height and/or the set up in general, though.
Hmm, strings didn’t cross my mind. The set I have on there is about 8 months old so maybe it’s time for a new set anyway! My most recent setup was done at the local guitar shop and it has been playing wonderfully until the last few days which is what has me most confused. Nothing changed except the output volume. I think I have a spare set of strings at home I’ll try to swap em out tonight and see if that helps!
It’s a MIM Fender J. Every other note comes through just fine on all the other strings except the A, and it also seems to be mainly affecting frets 1-4 on the A. Higher up the neck sounds fine which also has me perplexed
Fender is notorious for having problems with the A due to break angle. Every time I hear a weird problem on an A string, I always think is it a Fender?
You can test by pressing down on the A behind the nut and playing an open A with the other hand.
An easy fix I have found is using a fret wrap behind the nut and torqueing it down pretty good
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of these issues. Just seems weird that it would happen all of a sudden without any alterations to my instrument or signal chain.
Alright, first thing I did was check this break angle you guys were talking about and this is definitely an issue with the A string. Not as bad as the photo wombat posted, but still an issue. I don’t have any fret wraps or any way of pinning the string down behind the nut, so I changed my strings to try to wrap the new string as low around the peg as I could. First of all, wow…I think I successfully beat all the shine out of my old rounds. Compared to the new strings you’d think I’d been playing flats. The new strings seem to have helped but not completely solved the issue so I’ll pick up a wrap today to see if that helps. Thanks for the replies!
Well I stopped by my local guitar shop this afternoon hoping to pick up a fret wrap, surprisingly they didn’t have any, so I picked the guys brain for a minute about what might be causing the issue. He seemed just as stumped by it and offered up similar suggestions for a fix. Well, I hate to do it but I got home and rummaged around for a zip tie which is now strung across the A around the neck. The break angle isn’t perfect but it’s much closer to the rest of the strings and dare I say that’s fixed things. Going to make a few recordings this evening to check for sure.
Yeah I am also worried about damaging the neck with the zip tie but it seems to be working. I think I’ll look into these string trees, seems like an easy enough fix. Kind of irritating on a $1500 bass
