The eigth fret on the A string of my bass has really bad fret buzz. This doesn't happen anyhwhere else on the bass. I asked my friend (a fellow bass player) about it and he said it was a "dead spot". What is that and can it be fixed?
Thanks!
Ashley
"Dream as though you will live forever; live as though you will die today." ~James Dean
Might just be a rough spot on the fret. They can file that down no problem. Take it to your local tech.
Unless there is more to this than a simple fret buzz, your friend sounds a bit confused. A dead spot is where the note sounds dead -- it doesn't sustain in a fashion similar to the other notes, but dies away quickly. Dead spots are particularly noticeable on basses and a number of classic models seem to have these. Dead spots are caused by a complex interaction of coupling and resonances among the neck, body and strings -- basically a design issue, and not always easily "repaired."
Fret buzz is an entirely different phenomenon, and is related to and/or caused by string setup, fret wear, fret unevenness, loose frets, neck relief and other things I might have missed. It is a fixable problem. In your case, it's hard to know exactly which is the cause without seeing/hearing. Nevertheless, you could try raising that string slightly to see if you get some improvement. Checking neck relief and fret levelness with a good quality straightedge might also show up the problem. Or you could take it to a tech and have him/her give it a once over for these things. It is very likely a solvable problem.
Good luck. - G
-=tension & release=-
Buzzes aren't deadspots. Deadspots are parts of the neck (or body sometimes) that, when you play a note right there, the note doesn't sustain as long as other notes on other frets or parts of the neck. A deadspot is like the wood 'drinks in' the note and makes it stop sustaining, like a sympathetic vibration is set up and it cancels out the vibration of the string on that particular note.
A buzz is a mechanical, metal against metal (or itself) noise. If it's only on that one string and only on that fret, it might be a loose fret, a fret that's a little too high right there where the string is, or the neck may have developed an 'S' bow, which means it's arched or bowed a certain way on one side of the fretboard and it's curved or bowed (or straight) on the other side. It's like the wood twisted around the truss rod, and you can't really adjust it with the truss rod because if you tighten it, it makes one side more or less curved than the other.
If there's a buzz across the board on that fret, then maybe a slight adjustment of trussrod is in order. See, it's really rare to get an S bow, so it's more than likely the neck is 'evenly maladjusted' - you just hear the buzz on that one string probably because it's either a thicker string (4th string maybe) and a thicker string, being thicker, will hit up against the frets more than a thinner one will.
I'm pretty sure it's not an S bow.
One way to check is to use a straigh-edge of some kind and put it down the frets and see if the arch of the fretboard is the same on each side. Ususally you can just look down the neck from the bottom up and see it. If it's equally bowed, then maybe the whole thing needs to be adjusted.
Hope this helps.
