Dead Spots on My 4003 Neck... What To Do???

[sherekhan]

The the action on my 96' 4003 was terribly high so I took it to a tech for a "professional" set up. At the same time, I had the neck high-gain replaced with a re-issue toaster.

When I got it back I plugged into my "new" vintage Ampeg B-15--which had arrived while the bass was in the shop. As I started playing I couldn't believe the sound coming out of this thing: a really lovely round tone, with some badass sustain.

To further test this configuration,I went through the entire neck, string by string, fret by fret, to make sure that there was consistency all around. To my greatest sadness, I found that the D string is dead (volume goes way down, and there is no sustain at all)at the 8th and 9th fret, and the G string is dead at 3rd and 4th fret.

I'm not an expert bass player so I don't know if this is a common problem.

1) Any ideas if this is probably a set-up problem or an instrument problem?

2) If this is a common thing, is it fixable? How?

I will take it back to the tech, but wanted to hear what people thought about it so I know how to respond to whatever he tells me.

Thanks guys.

Alex.

[rickenbrother]

I've never had problems with deadspots on a Rick 4001 / 4003 bass, and I have owned several.
Things to check:
The string itself might be bad, or not sitting in the saddle properly.
The bridge assembly not be properly sitting in it's well in the tailpiece.
The the action might be too low / too much relief in the neck.
One or both of the pickups might be too high, the magenetic properties of the pickup actually dampen the string if they are too close.
Least possibility, check every screw on your bass to make sure they are not loose. I know someone who went nuts over deadspots on his bass until he tightened a strap button screw that he realized was loose.
I'm sure other guys here will have more suggestions, good luck.

[jwr2]

When you set up a Ric ... you have to loosen and tighten the strings a lot because of the Ric bridge/tailpiece design ... this makes strings go dead faster ...

Also most basses have dead spots ... well at least spots that resonate and sustain less than other places ... and most amps will be more effecient in some frequencies ... in other words a C may resonate and sustain better than a D or something similar ...

my advice ... put a new set of strings on ... I have 13 basses and I like to change strings a lot so I buy cheap nickel wound strings in bulk for under $10 a set ...

So for a good sounding bass change the strings a lot ...

[philco]

Alexis, you will find this to a differing degree on virtually any bass that has a non-reinforced wood neck. Almost any wooden necked bass will have the flat spot on the G string somewhere between the 3rd and 7th frets. On my 4004L, it is around the 5th fret. It will also be on the D string 5 frets above the G string, and on the A string 5 frets higher still as they are the same note. It is caused by the resonant frequency of the neck. The headstock vibrates much more at this resonant frequency and you can verify it by lightly touching the headstock while playing the dead note and then a note several frets away. If you get a graphite reinforced neck, or one built of graphite as on a Status bass, the neck is so stiff that the resonant frequency is above the highest note on the G string. Basses with stiff necks that alleviate these resonances are often described as "sterile", but I have found that I like them better for their consistent character anywhere on the neck. Other people like the "woodier" sound of the non-reinforced neck. A flatsawn non-reinforced neck is the least stiff of all, and has the most "woody" sound. Check all hardware for tightness, as loose hardware can exaggerate the "wolf notes" caused by the system resonance. Changing to heavier or lighter strings can change the dead spots around to where it is more or less annoying to you.

While you are letting the tech check out your bass, grab a Spector, Status, Steinberger, or other brand bass if there is one with graphite neck reinforcement available for testing in his shop and notice the difference in the behavior of the neck around the dead note. My Spector still has this dead note effect to a degree, but it is so slight that you would probably never notice it unless you go hunting for it like I did. Spector informs me that their new basses have even stiffer necks than the one I have. They are so stiff that they need a double acting truss rod to force some positive bow into the neck because the string pull is often not strong enough by itself to do the job.

Your bass probably had this dead note all along, but you only noticed it when you were really checking it out with long sustained notes. My 4004L has much less noticeable dead note effect when playing fast notes. My other 2 basses with non-reinforced flatsawn necks have almost the same dead note effect. Some manufacturers build the neck out of two or more different woods to reduce the effect by spreading it out over a wider frequency (each wood will have a different resonant frequency) without adding stiffening materials.

[jps]

Another thing to try is barely turning the truss rod on the G string side a bit either direction, this is a trick that sometimes helps.

[cheyenne]

When I replace my strings, I tune them to pitch and then pull the string out from the bass and let it snap against the fretboard to relieve the tension across the nut. It kinda helps let new strings settle in. I read that somewhere and it really does work.

[philco]

This dead note effect is not peculiar to basses. Every lead guitarist knows of "sweet spots" on the neck where notes sustain better and other places where sustaining a note is very hard.

It should also be mentioned that others who have owned Rickenbackers have mentioned that the G string tends to be a bit quieter than the other strings. I noticed this uneveness of volume on my 4004L as well.

[rictified]

Sometimes high tension strings will agravate dead spots, and a too bowed neck will do it also, and the idea of turning the truss rods very slightly is a good one, it has worked for me before. I would try al the suggections, have the strings been changed or are they the same strings, if they are the same strings then you know it's something to do with the set up.
If you have a pickup too high the string should get progressively deader as you go down the neck as it gets closer and closer to the pickup the closer you get to the pickups. (Yogi Berra gave me that one)
Dead spots like that are usually a set up problem with the neck or strings and/or string tension and/or a combination of all three.

[sherekhan]

Great suggestions guys. I'll let you know how it goes. For now I'll say that the strings are Pyramid flatwounds and I re-strung the bass with them a month ago. The set up was done last week.

Thanks.

[rictified]

The first thing I would do is fool around with the truss rods, that usually does the trick. If nothing works, you might want to try TI flats, those let your bass resonate a lot better, I think anyway, because they are very light gauge, and you can raise the action to compensate for the lightness and they will still play and sound great

[bassduke49]

Another possibility: these spots are the same notes, aren't they? The ninth fret on the D string is B, and the fourth fret on the G string is also B at the same octave (and therefore frequency). It could be that your amplifier and the room you are in have a natural resonance that may be damping that high B note. You might try a different amp or set up in a different room and see if it is still "dead." Sorry, my high-school physics class is indelible!

[paul_yan]

Welcome aboard, Alexis.

My reasoning is that all basses come with dead spots. Most basses and guitars and stringed instruments are made of wood for the most part and woods do have their own characters. A good setup can make an instrument be close to perfect, but never perfect, IMHO.

I also agree with Paul's take on the room factor. Some notes just don't sound as loud as the others in a particular room. Some standing waves in the room can actually be out of phase with certain notes and cancel them out and make them dead.

Sometimes a particular amp (no matter how expensive or how cheap) can't fully and flatly reproduce all frequencies so you'll find certain notes deader than the others.

Bob is also right on. Try tightening the rods for 1/32 or 1/16 turn and see/hear if it helps.

Oddly, the G strings on both my '86 and '98 4003 are louder than I like them to be and livelier than the other 3 strings, unplugged, with all sorts of strings. I was lucky enough to have Sergio build me pickups with adjustable polepieces so the volume balance across all strings are perfect now. IMHO, adjustable polepieces are a must. (How can you mic 4 singers whose voices are not equally loud with fixed microphone distances?)

[philco]

Some good points were brought up. If you play your bass through an amp, the room and amp can have a huge influence. To see if the BASS is the culprit, play it unplugged. That is how I determine the dead spots on my bass. You will see the dead spot on the same note at different frets on different strings. On a 4 string bass with 24 frets, you should see at least 4 dead notes, or more if the adjacent notes are also dead. Sometimes 2 notes are equally dead because system resonance is right in the middle between them.

Here is a strange one. I noticed one night that my bass sounded especially dead. I switched between the two channels and found the left channel was much worse. Next to the left speaker was a closed and empty cardboard box. The box was resonating out of phase over a wide frequency range of several notes and was sucking out the volume of the notes. It was killing the sustain. Removing the box from the room solved the problem.

To test if it is your AMP, just take the amp outdoors away from any reflective surfaces and see if the dead notes are at different places on the neck relative to the unplugged dead spots, or if the dead spots get worse due to mutual reinforcement.

A bass player can use a wah pedal like a guitar player does to shift the phase and vary the amount of sustaining feedback. The tone controls on your bass/guitar and amp shift the phase angle of the fundamentals relative to the overtones as well as reducing certain frequencies. See if the dead spots shift around as you vary the tone control on your bass when you play through an amp. Plugging a SansAmp RBI into my Marshall amp has a tremendous effect on the dead spots. The RBI works much better for bass through "straight wire with gain" audiophile type power amplifiers (so pick up that old B&K, Crown, or Hafler amp you saw if you want a nice clean bass head). I am beginning to agree with Eddie Van Halen. You just need volume controls on your guitar/bass and only one stage of tone control in your preamp. Stacking of tone controls can cause severe phase shifting problems.

You can't do much about room resonance problems except play through two or more cabinets located in different places that excites a different room resonance. The idea is to spread out the resonances as equally as possible. A single bass cabinet is notorious for exciting room resonances.

[admin]

Good idea Philip. I have my extension cord and I am going out there now, if you catch my drift.

[philco]

EXCELLENT ACOUSTICS, Peter! The snow will prevent any standing waves and reflections from spoiling your experiment by soaking up the sound.