Guitar How-To

Archive for the ‘Bass Guitars’ Category

So your bass guitar has fret buzz and you do not know how to fix it. Well, if I were you I would not be letting anybody near my bass guitar who had to go to a website called Guitar How-To for advice. The fact that you are here tells me that you probably should not be trusted to go poking around in a bass guitar with a screwdriver or a soldering iron.

On the other hand we can’t go through our musical lives just learning how to play our instruments without also learning about how they work. Especially fairly delicate musical instruments like electric bass guitars. So let’s talk about bass guitar fret buzz and some of the causes and possible home remedies, even if eventually you are going to have to take your bass to an expert.

Your bass guitar buzzes at a certain fret. All the time. You have tried changing the strings and adjusting the saddles. That is the limit of your expertise, so now what? If you take it to a guitar shop they might recommend that the neck be reset. This would be better than you making things worse by fooling around in the saddles or anywhere else that looks like it could be adjusted by an enthusiastic amateur.

Sometimes you get vibration when you play certain frets on your bass guitar. Often it’s hard to tell where the buzzing or vibration is coming from. One thing an amateur can do is look for loose parts around the area of the tuning keys. Any small part can be loose and causing an annoying vibration when the bass is fired up. The other place where this can happen is around the bridge. Notice I said an amateur can LOOK for the possible cause of the noise. If you do not feel absolutely confident about what you are doing, do not touch it.

If you choose to go looking for the cause of the fret buzz or vibration yourself, just so you understand what’s going on, you could get a friend to look for the source of the buzz while you play the notes that cause the buzz. It’s alot easier than trying to get the guitar to make the noise while examining it minutely at the same time.

Sometimes what can happen to cause fret buzz, say on the first, second and third strings on the second fret, is the bar between the frets is lower than the others. This makes the strings touch the bar when they are played. Or one fret could be higher than the others. If this is the case a special file can be used to make the fret go deeper into the fretboard. This is an easy job for a luthier, just don’t let him talk you into having ALL the frets adjusted if only one is buzzing.

One thing that could be responsible for bass guitar fret buzz is not adjusting the truss rod when you change to a new string gauge. This will not only cause buzz but warp the guitar neck, too.

When you take your bass guitar into the guitar shop to have it looked at, don’t be afraid to tell the man what areas you have been fooling with. I know it’s embarrassing but even if you lie to him, he’ll find out when he examines it. It’s just that if he has to go to extra trouble and time to look for a fault that you could have told him about, it’s going to cost you.

Various random buzzings can come from your bass guitar without the physical components being at fault. If you are getting an electronic buzz in your speaker, try shutting down any appliances like televisions and cell phones.

By Ricky Sharples
This article is aimed at helping the beginner bass guitar player to learn the notes of the bass guitar. If you want to play bass guitar you will need to know the names of seven notes and their places on the bass guitar fretboard. Once you know where the notes are you will automatically know where the sharps and flats are located. Playing bass is an easy to learn skill from a technical point of view. After all, for the bass guitar you do not need to learn chords. At least not at the start. While you are learning the notes on the fretboard you could start right away on learning the bass parts to some of your favorite songs from tabs. The big task ahead of you is getting the ability to take your place as a part of the group you are in. Learning the notes is a start, learning them so that you so not have to think about them takes time and practice.

Here are the notes as they appear on the bass guitar fretboard:

G|—G#—|—A—|—A#—|—B—|—C—|—C#—|—D—|—D#—|—E—|—F—|

D|—D#—|—E—|—F—|—F#–|—G—|—G#—|—A—|—A#—|—B—-|—C—|

A|—A#—|—B—|—C—|—C#–|—D—|—D#—|—E—|—F—-|—F#—|—G—|

E|—F—-|—F#–|—G—|—G#–|—A—|—A#—|—B—|—C—-|—C#—|—D—|

You will notice that I have written the sharp symbol (#) on the diagram of the bass fretboard. You probably already know that one man’s sharp is another man’s flat according to which key the song is in. For instance F# could also be called Gb (G flat) because it is both the note above F and the note below G. Easy to understand but complicated to explain.

Usually you begin learning bass guitar by using the E and A strings to play the bass line of some easy songs. You could begin by simply memorizing where the notes are but it will help if you set yourself the task of learning a song or two. Your memory always appreciates some help from your body and your feelings, so trying to learn some songs will help you get the notes under your skin. You will note that I have only given you the first ten frets. You will see that this is one octave on each string. Once you have the notes on those frets off by heart, the remaining notes will be much easier to learn.

If you take a look at the diagram of the fretboard, you will see that the note at the fifth fret of the E string (A) is the note on the next open string, so once you play up to the fifth fret, you can either continue playing up the neck or you can start playing the notes on the next string. If you have already learnt to play the guitar this will not be a surprise to you. Now that I have explained the basics, if your head is spinning a little, just go back to the simplicity of what you are learning: four strings, four octaves made up of seven notes. That is it. Good luck.