Over picking a string / Distortion.

[jonnythenotes]

Can you over stress a string by digging in too hard? Can being to aggressive when playing finger style cause the string to send out an over cooked signal to the pick up, which in turn seems to drive the amp/speaker into distorting, and also kills the note, as somehow the sustain seems to fade very quickly... It's not a volume related problem, as it seems to happen at normal gigging volumes, and the gear I use is more than adequate for handling the volumes I put through it. It's a passive MIA jazz bass, and it's not bottom heavy rock or dub that I play. I am sure I read somewhere that you can over stress a string if you hit it to hard, which in turn sends a shock like signal to the amp..,something to do with sine waves and other techy stuff.... Any ideas folks before I start looking for answers elsewhere.

[Mykesbass]

There was some great science on this somewhere before - I'll see if I can find it.

Edit - found it - scroll down beneath the pictures: [url="http://www.garywillis.com/pages/bass/bassmanual/theramp.html"]http://www.garywillis.com/pages/bass/bassmanual/theramp.html[/url]

Edited November 6, 2016 by Mykesbass

[jonnythenotes]

Wow Mykebass.... That's a great little graphic you just put up there. You really have hit the nail on the head there mucka..... Cheers..

Edited November 6, 2016 by jonnythenotes

[Mykesbass]

But I still can't help being an over-physical player

[Lozz196]

I think it might be something to do with the gain on the amp being set a bit too high, so when you dig in you get this. I encountered something similar with a Gallien Krueger MB amp, if I pushed the gain too high, when I hit a string hard, especially the E or A, it sounded like the speaker was hitting a brick wall and the note ended very abruptly.

[jonnythenotes]

Thanks Lozz.... To try an give an example of when it occurs would be to say if the whole band is playing together, and collectively producing volume 'X', and there is a part within the song where the bass takes a dominant roll, the rest of the band pull back a little to help accentuate this, thus reducing volume 'X', but the bass, now with reduced support from the other players has to still maintain volume 'X'. This is probably ok if you are going thru a PA, and there is an engineer at hand to lift your volume as and when in a song, but without this luxury, the next best thing is to try and increase the volume by digging in harder, which seems to be when the problem occurs.... and as you pointed out, predominantly on the lower notes/strings.

[TrevorR]

Interesting article on the Gary Willis site but I do wonder if there is a bit of pseudoscience in there and he is actually describing more of a psychoacoustic effect of how we perceive a note with a loud attack and lower body sustain - a sort of natural compassion thing going on in our brains. Or maybe I'm just being too sceptical.

However, in the OP's situation I wonder if there is a combination of two things happening both being caused by the pickups being a touch too close to the strings? First the close proximity causing too high a signal to be sensed by the pickups, causing the audible overloading. I'm convinced that pickups can be over-loaded in this manner and small decreases in pickup height can make a big difference, esp since the signal strength fro my the vibrating string will vary on an inverse square relationship. Seen this happen on a few Wals which have particularly powerful pickups. Whether it's the pickups themselves overloading and distorting or the high pickup output overdriving the input stage of the active circuit I'm not sure. However, a slight tweak of the pickup height cures it.

Also, if the pickup is too close to the string then the strings can experience magnetic damping effects, causing sustain to be lost.

[mikel]

It could be a little like hitting a drum. If you are having to really whack the drum to make it heard all you will hear is the fundamental, with no resonance or overtones as they get lost, there is no sustain. If you are playing the drum at a reasonable level you will hear all the overtones and resonance, the full spectrum of the drum sound. Could be the same with the bass strings.

[jonnythenotes]

Trevor and Mikel.... Again some brilliant and easy to understand analysis and potential remedies here..... Thanks to ALL of you who have offered advice, and hopefully one or two cures... Oh.....and keep em coming.... Thanks again. PS..... I forgot to add on my initial post that when this distortion happens, the 'clip' light doesn't flash on, so my presumption is that without the clip light flashing, it therefore means that the signal hasn't been to much for the amp..(tecamp puma 900.) Cheers.

Edited November 7, 2016 by jonnythenotes

[Guest bassman7755]

[quote name='jonnythenotes' timestamp='1478467966' post='3169289']
Can you over stress a string by digging in too hard? Can being to aggressive when playing finger style cause the string to send out an over cooked signal to the pick up, which in turn seems to drive the amp/speaker into distorting, and also kills the note, as somehow the sustain seems to fade very quickly...
[/quote]

A note struck percussively may sustain less than a note that is plucked cleanly, this is because a percussive strike is generally making the string vibrate in the vertical plain relative to the fingerboard where its vibration is going to be chocked by hitting the frets, wheres a clean pluck makes it vibrate parallel to the finger board where it has much more room.

[jonnythenotes]

7755.... Thanks for that. All these little bits of info and advice are really making me look forward to my next gig on Saturday, where I will try and implicate a lot of what has been said over the last couple of days.... Love it....

[jonnythenotes]

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Edited November 7, 2016 by jonnythenotes

[BigRedX]

IIRC from my physics lessons a long. long time ago, the pickup is simply a device that produces an electrical current in the coil in response to an iron-rich object moving through the magnetic field. All that happens as you "dig in" is that the current is larger and therefore the signal is louder, but the pickup itself can't clip or produce clipping. You won't get clipping until the signal reaches the first bit of active circuitry that doesn't sufficient headroom for the increased signal volume, whether that's a pre-amp in the bass, the input circuitry of your amp, or something in the signal chain in-between like an effect.

[jonnythenotes]

Thanks Big Red..... I am now pretty convinced that I'm the cause of this, and by a couple of tweaks here and there to pick up height, reducing the pre amp vol, lowering some of the eq levels to help calm the signal, and also being a bit less aggressive myself on the strings, , it might resolve this..... Thank you..

[Phil Starr]

You really aren't going to overload the pickup, or move the strings out of the magnetic field.

I think the distortion is coming from problems in the gain structure. as the signal passes through your amp it is amplified in stages. at the simplest there'll be an input stage then some sort of tone and volume control which may have their own gain then there will probably be further amplification up to the input to the power amp with probably a further volume control then the power amp. One of your volume controls will probably be labelled gain. You might also have an active bass with its own pre amp and the bass will have a volume control.

Each amplification stage will have a point where it overloads, once it overloads and distorts the following stages will simply pass the distortion on.

Now if you turn the master volume right up to full and the guitar volume down you'll have a small signal going to the early stages and all the gain right at the power amp. So long as this doesn't overload you won't have any distortion. Now turn the master volume down and the guitar and the earlier volume controls right up and there is a strong possibility you'll have distortion at one of the earlier stages even though you will still be operating at the same volume. Operating the tone controls with boosts will also potentially create overloads. 10db of boost is asking your amp to produce a lot more voltage.

The problem is that if you turn the master volume up full it will amplify all the electronic noise in the amp, leads and pickup noise (if the guitar is turned up full)

I'd check the batteries if I was operating an active bass. A flat battery will limit the maximum voltage a bass can produce. I'd turn the volume on the bass up to 3/4 and check on an active bass that I didn't have too much bass boost. Turn the master volume down so you are operating at a low volume. You should be able to get an undistorted sound however hard you play. If you get distortion you may need to turn the pre-amp volume/gain down a little. If you can't get a clean sound then there is something else going on. If you can't get clean you can try turning down the bass even more. Once you get a clean sound at this level you can turn up the master volume and you should get the same clean sound until you meet the amps maximum volume. Now if you want a little distortion you can turn up the gain and the master down until the distortion is how you want it.

[jonnythenotes]

Thanks for that Phil....... A great and in depth analysis of potential reasons for the problem, and ways to cure it... I'm very grateful for your time in putting the effort in to that...

[charic]

Get a volume pedal for your amp and just keep your playing consistent?

[dmccombe7]

I experienced this with my Jazz bass too and did find with everything at same settings all i did was turn the amp master up a touch and i automatically started to play lighter to keep the volume right for the band mix. That stopped the dying note syndrome i had.
I did try other basses at same settings before and after and all sounded same both before and after master volume raised.
I then found that i had to also adjust my tone by reducing the amount of bass and i have ended up with a SAD face set up on a graphic rather than a smiley face.
All this advice was via the amazing BC'ers that responded to me query.

I went thru the usual suspects of thinking it was my pick-ups failing, action too low, problem with the amp, compressor failing, leads failing and nothing helped until i put up for discussion and all sorted.

Occasionally i forget usually when using someone else's amp or studio amps and i start playing too hard again rather than just turning the amp up.
Its easy to fall into this when you set up at start and guitarist starts to increase his volume or drumer starts playing louder and all of a sudden you are too low and you start playing harder.

Dave