SRMS805 ghost tones

J

Jerry Ewing

Mar 14, 2019
32
21
4,531
St. Peters, MO
#1
Just got a slightly used SRMS805. Immediately put D'Addario Chromes on it. When I am not muting strings with my fretting hand (as when playing a fast, technical piece where I need to bend the fingers) I get a ghost tone/overtone. I get the note played (vibrating between the fret and the bridge) and also get a note that seems to be from the string vibrating between the fret and the nut. This of course is not as loud but just enough to be annoying. Put the original D'Addario round wounds back on, no change. Seems to be happening mainly on the A, D and G strings and on frets between about 6 and 10. Only way to eliminate it seems to be to get rid of a lot of treble and mids but then the tone is to dark. Anybody got helpful ideas?
 
#2
Did you do basic setup routine after changing the strings?

The Chromes are higher tension than the factory stock XL Nickels. The neck would had been bowed when you had the Chromes on. And it might not instantly return to original state when you've put the XL Nickels back on.
 
#3
Just got the bass back from the shop. They can find no problems. Setup is great, frets are fine, etc. They are baffled as to the cause of the issue. Their only suggestion is to use something like a hair scrunchy to mute the strings just below the nut. Anybody have any other suggestions or ideas?
 
#4
Jerry Ewing said:
Just got the bass back from the shop. They can find no problems. Setup is great, frets are fine, etc. They are baffled as to the cause of the issue. Their only suggestion is to use something like a hair scrunchy to mute the strings just below the nut. Anybody have any other suggestions or ideas?
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The hair scrunchy/string mute thing is probably going to be your best bet, short of retraining your fretting fingers to mute during a fretting frenzy.

I used to get the back half of the string vibrating when doing a hammer-on high on the fretboard onto an already vibrating open string. I modified my technique to use the middle and ring fingers to do the hammer-ons, and my index finger muting the string a fret behind, but this only only applies to that particular situation.
 
#5
Thanks for the tip. I think I'm gonna get a Gruv Gear fret wrap and see if the solves the problem in the short term. And then, along with that, I'll start paying more attention to how I can mute strings with my fretting hand. I have been primarily using the floating thumb technique on my picking hand.
 
#6
Strange things can cause such vibrations. Last time for me it was one of the tuner bushings had become slightly loose and the resonant frequency for my vibration was the open A.

Hopefully you can track it down and eliminate it, sounds like you have a lively piece of lumber.
 
#8
Wow, never thought of the tuner bushings causing the problem. I know that when I put the flatwounds on I noticed that some of the nuts on the tuners were loose. I will check them all this evening. And lively is a good description. The repair guy who looked at it (who is supposed to be one of the best in St. Louis) kinda said the same thing, that the extra tones may just be from the combination of the various physical properties of the bass and may not anything particularly "wrong". Thanks for the tip
 
#11
Tightened the tuners and that had no effect. The Gruv Gear fret wrap that I ordered arrived this morning. Problem solved!!!!!!! And, even with the nut position on the fanned frets, I can still fret at the first fret. Now I can get onto loving the guitar as opposed to be frustrated. But one thing I figured out. The SRMS805 is much less forgiving of finger placement. I have to fret right up against the fret to avoid extraneous noises, much more so than on my SR3005 or SR405.
 
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