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Post subject: Re: Fender Fatfinger?
Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:21 am
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Professional Musician
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Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2009 4:50 pm
Posts: 1339
Location: Denver, CO, USA
The weird thing is that the Fat Finger has been sold for decades. The original GT version was bigger, bulkier, with a squarer front piece.

So not just selling well enough to bother making it, but selling well enough to justify the cost of retooling it to the more stylish current version. And up until recently, they also made a larger bass version.

People must be buying them -- usually paying full retail. It costs money to make stuff, package it, market it, warehouse it, distribute it -- so you don't make stuff that doesn't sell.

But no one uses them. Most web comments are like mine: "eh, it does something super subtle but not better or worse and it now sits in a box with other stuff I just had to try". But still they sell...
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Aluminum picks are awesome. Buffalo horn picks sound different than nylon, which sounds different than celluloid. Stone picks are interesting, but like stainless picks they're a little too harsh for me. Flappy thin picks sound different than stiff thick picks. Different shapes/sizes sound different. Billy Gibbons and Brian May use coins.

For the retail price of a Fat Finger you can explore a world of much more dramatic tone differences.
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Dead spots? Either play those notes on different strings, avoid those notes, or sell/trade that guitar.

(Assuming good setup and you've tried a variety of string brands/gauges, life's too short to waste time trying to change the basic nature of a guitar. Some are bright, some are warm, some are crisp and punchy, some are spongey, and they're all good for some things and bad for others.)


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Post subject: Re: Fender Fatfinger?
Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 6:35 pm
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Rock Star
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Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 4:50 pm
Posts: 7998
Location: ʎɹʇunoɔ ǝsoɹ pןıʍ
Dead spots on a bass? (or a guitar for that matter)
Think about doing a full setup.
If that doesn't help think about doing a fret level and re-crown followed by a full setup.
If that doesn't help think about a re-fret or bigger frets followed by a full setup.

Dead spots aren't normal or acceptable.
There is something wrong that needs to be fixed.
It's usually fret related, often cured by a proper setup but might be exacerbated by worn frets or unwise relief choices.
A hunk of nickel plated flat-bar clamped to your headstock won't cure it.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Fatfinger?
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 1:13 am
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Rock Star
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Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:53 am
Posts: 4240
That's not far from what I've thought about dead spots, but the "setup/fret related problem" doesn't explain why (according to web forum knowledge) a major part of the dead spots on basses seems to concentrate on the same area (G string 5/6/7 frets).

It's never been a significant problem for me, but if someone has the will & time to investigate this aspect further, the "DEAD SPOTS OF ELECTRIC BASSES" research papers by Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil's Helmut Fleischer and Hugo Fastl are easy to find on the web.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Fatfinger?
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 3:58 am
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Rock Star
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Location: ʎɹʇunoɔ ǝsoɹ pןıʍ
I have always found the G string to be noticeably hotter than the other strings.
Never played one that wasn't so.
Currently have a pair of Jazzes and they both have relatively hot G strings.
Nothing dead about them.
Never had a dead spot on any of my guitars, bass or otherwise but then I always set up a guitar as soon as I get it.
I've fixed dead spots for other people with a tweak to their setup.
I've not heard of a consistent issue on the G in that region.
What I have noticed is a tendency for people to assume they can set up their basses with action as low as a guitar and it creates problems.
I explain that bigger strings at lower tension vibrating at lower frequencies need more room to vibrate.
The strings vibrate across a wider sweep than on guitars.
People sometimes don't like hearing that and insist they want to keep their action too low.
In those instances I shrug my shoulders and wish them luck.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Fatfinger?
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:32 am
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Location: ʎɹʇunoɔ ǝsoɹ pןıʍ
I tried to read that paper a couple of years ago.
It was about sustain IIRC.
It was not an easy read.
There was a lot of math involved and it was pretty easy to see by the wording and sentence structure that it was originally written in German.
I glossed through most of the technical aspects of it and focussed more on the conclusions and findings rather than the procedures used and the calculations.
The findings were that the construction materials of the bass were an important factor in sustain.
It made reference to the materials in the neck and body being "excited" by the vibrating string.
There were also some references to differing patterns of torsional flexion within the neck occurring at various frequencies which could create what we call dead spots.
The reason for the dead spots had to do with the neck flexion creating a condition in which the frets further up the neck got in the way.

I came away from it with renewed faith that my understanding of setup and the effects of wood selection on tone and sustain were accurate.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Fatfinger?
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2019 5:06 pm
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Joined: Thu Oct 25, 2018 7:37 pm
Posts: 15
Location: Bangkok
I bought one of these to try to get rid of a dead note on a expensive Ibanez J-Custom RG8550MZ

Finally I got rid of it. Not the dead note but the J-Custom

PS: the dead note was not related to the setup, frets, trussrod or neck. It was the guitar body absorbing the vibrational energy of one specific frequency (C at 523 Hz).

https://www.jemsite.com/forums/f18/j-cu ... 370-3.html

The ONLY way to get rid of the dead spot was this:

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A true FAT FINGER clamped over the dead note to increase the mass at that specific point


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