Reducing Bass Fret Noise

[hobo]

Hello, all.

My band has just finished recording our CD, and we're currently mixing. I used a mini Carlo Robelli (with amazingly good tone) and an Ibanez GSR200. the unfortunate thing about the Ibanez (and perhaps my playing style?) is that there is a lot of fret noise in the recording (strings hitting the frets, a "click" sound). I had hoped that a simple bandstop would fix this, but when i examined the sound a little more, i discovered that the click is very broad in frequency. I used EQ to cut around 2-4Khz, and that helped - but now the bass lacks definition, and you can still hear the click.

Any suggestions, besides manually removing the clicks with a digital sound editor (that's my bag), or re-recording?

 

[David Katauskas]

Are you referring to fret click, when the finger presses down on the string, or fret buzz, when a note is played.

If the latter, then you may need to raise the bridge a bit. I have the same bass and that was the first mod I had to do. The allen wrench is very small and don't remember the size.

Also check to see if the neck is bowed...probably not...but it only takes 2 seconds.

btw - I really get some amazing sounds from that bass.

ALSO, if your bass player is using a pick, it is not uncommon to hit the pickup with the pick...hence an annoying click. This is probably the culprit.

 

[DonF]

You could try something like a de-esser. The idea is that you find a narrow frequency band that contains only the undesired sound. Feed only that band into the key input of a compresser, which is riding the gain of the bass track. Attack and release settings would probably be pretty fast, and then you play with the threshold and ratio until the undesired sound is reduced, but the overall sound isn't badly affected -- if such a setting exists at all.

I've never tried this, but I suppose it might work.

 

[Zaphod B]

Hobo -

I think the click may be caused by the position of your right hand, and I'm guessing that you are plucking the strings over the fretboard. Unless you use a pretty soft touch, this can cause the string to hit the fretboard. The long-term solution is to either move your right hand further to the right, and / or use a light touch.

Near-term, I don't have any suggestions for fixing what's on your mix. Good luck!

 

[hobo]

David - Specifically, it is the sound of the string hitting the frets. The way i play is to hit a note, and depending on the place in the music, i will mute it - but when i mute it, i push the string in (towards the fret board) and the result is that it hits the frets. Unfortunately, my pickups receive that noise.
I do have the proper allen wrenches to adjust the bridge, and i will probably do that for later recordings/performances. but that falls under "re-recording", which i don't want to do at this point. but yes - i do like the pure tone from this bass. it is a good, full sound.

DonF - i will look into that. hopefully you have found my solution! the only other thing i could think of, after i posted this, was perhaps a software "noise reducer", where you can feed the offending noise in and it removes it from your wave. 2 downsides to that - 1, you lose quality anytime you do this, and 2, it's designed for removing hiss or buzz.

Zaphod - nice name, i love those books. No, i'm not playing over the fretboard - i actually play between the P and J pickups, primarily. i just really hit the strings I have found that moving my hand towards the bridge reduces this, but it also changes the timbre of the bass, which i don't like. Good suggestion, though.

Thanks, guys.

 

[Garry Sharp]

Sounds like you might be playing too hard. The trick to playing bass for recording is to play very softly.

 

[Supercreep]

I think the sound you describe is one of the reasons I love electric bass so much. YMMV.

 

[DonF]

Well, I was going to point out that there is another option: to accept the sound as-is. But I figured he had already considered and rejected that idea.

 

[Garry Sharp]

I think the sound you describe is one of the reasons I love electric bass so much. YMMV.

I agree completely. It's amazing how that clacking that sounds so awful soloed can work in a mix. Bit like a singer's breathing sometimes. Don't want it overdone though!