D string quieter than other strings on my bass

I don't play bass often but today i decided to plug in my Ibanez 4 string bass for a little mess around. It's a PJ setup. I only just noticed that the D string is is quieter than the other strings (open or fretted anywhere on the board).

It can't be the pickup height surely because the G string is on par with the A and E strings. All the strings are from the same batch so it's not a rogue D string. 

Can't be pickups either because it's happening on both P and J pickups.

Muted the bass so i can hear the strings unamplified and D string seems to be ringing properly like the other strings. 

Any ideas? Has this happened to anyone else? 

LionAquaLooper said:

All the strings are from the same batch so it's not a rogue D string. 

Ain’t necessarily so. Just because strings are from the same set does not prove in any way that one of them can’t be duff.

Given that it affects both pickups but not the acoustic volume, it’s the first thing I would suspect. Change the D and see what happens.

LionAquaLooper said:

I only just noticed that the D string is quieter than the other strings (open or fretted anywhere on the board). 

Amplified, unplugged or both?

LionAquaLooper said: 

It can't be the pickup height surely because the G string is on par with the A and E strings. 

All the strings are from the same batch so it's not a rogue D string. 

Can't be pickups either because it's happening on both P and J pickups. 

I disagree with all three of these assumptions.

How old are the strings? It is possible that the D is the one degrading first. The other three may not be very far behind.

It would be worth inspecting the nut slot under the D string for wear or cracks. 

On a traditional J Bass pickup, all of the polepieces are the same length but the string heights above the poles are determined by the fingerboard radius. Thus, A and D are likely to be slightly quieter than E and G.

On a split coils P Bass pickup, the distance between the strings and the pickup polepieces is fully adjustable to taste.

It is possible that the rod magnet polepieces that sense the D string have been de-Gaussed. Unlikely but not impossible.

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Thanks both. I'll bite the bullet and buy a set of strings, or at least just a D string and see if that fixes it.

@Funkfingers , it's happening when amplified. That string doesn't sound  muffled or dead when not amplified compared to the other 3 strings, which made me assume it's not the string. But as I said I'll give it a shot anyway. Also, it's an Ibanez GSR200 bass. 

If it is a degraded string, that's gonna be something that's never happened to me before in all my years of playing guitar (albeit mainly 6 string electrics). Certainly strings have degraded on my strats, teles, etc many times but I've never noticed a volume drop on just one string. Is this kind of thing more noticeable on basses? 

The Ibanez GSR200 is almost certainly blessed with budget pickups featuring steel stud polepieces and underslung ceramic bar magnets. 

I had something similar with an A string - turned out to be the room acoustics / amp interaction.
With my size of room and a TC 208 combo any A note was much louder than the others.

Moving the combo helped a little, a Fender Rumble 200 fixed things.

PrecisionGuided said:

I had something similar with an A string - turned out to be the room acoustics / amp interaction.
With my size of room and a TC 208 combo any A note was much louder than the others.

Moving the combo helped a little, a Fender Rumble 200 fixed things.

I'm inclined to think along these lines. OP says no difference at the instrument but issue occurs when amplified. If not the pickup, the amp might not be responding to some frequencies and the room can resonate better with some frequencies than others, giving the impression that a range of notes are quieter than other. Difficult to create good test conditions.

Perhaps with a DAW you can measure the direct signal from the bass and if you can hear the difference between strings, you might see/measure less input? That would then suggest the guitar is the culprit? Take it from there.

I would say almost 100% it's a duff string
In 15 years of repairing and rewinding pickups I have never known a magnet to spontaneously degauss (apart from CuNiFi ones on Wide Range pickups), Both alnico and ceramic magnets are incredibly stable and can go 80-100 years without losing significant charge. I've known of folks trying to 'age' their magnets by stroking them with a stronger ceramic or neodymium magnet and feck them up - but 'hard' magnets generally don't lose their charge by themselves.

OilCityPickups said:

I would say almost 100% it's a duff string
In 15 years of repairing and rewinding pickups I have never known a magnet to spontaneously degauss (apart from CuNiFi ones on Wide Range pickups), Both alnico and ceramic magnets are incredibly stable and can go 80-100 years without losing significant charge. I've known of folks trying to 'age' their magnets by stroking them with a stronger ceramic or neodymium magnet and feck them up - but 'hard' magnets generally don't lose their charge by themselves.

Ah but, yeah but, OP says he can't hear any difference at the instrument? I don't think we've ruled out resonant room frequencies using the amp? Have we ruled out excessive ear wax? :)

Al_Nico said:

Ah but, yeah but, OP says he can't hear any difference at the instrument? I don't think we've ruled out resonant room frequencies using the amp? Have we ruled out excessive ear wax? :)

If it's up the whole length of the string but doesn't affect the same notes played on other strings, it has to something specific to that string - either the string itself, the pickups or the bridge. Since it's almost impossible that two pickups could exhibit the same fault, that leaves the string and the bridge. Given that it doesn't sound quieter acoustically, it's almost certainly the string. Given that it's the easiest thing to change, it's the first place to start.

I once had a set of acoustic strings which sounded fine acoustically, but with a magnetic soundhole pickup the top E was almost inaudible. Somehow, they had made it with a far less ferromagnetic type of steel than the rest of the set... I have no idea how.

ICBM said:

Al_Nico said:

Ah but, yeah but, OP says he can't hear any difference at the instrument? I don't think we've ruled out resonant room frequencies using the amp? Have we ruled out excessive ear wax? :)

If it's up the whole length of the string but doesn't affect the same notes played on other strings, it has to something specific to that string - either the string itself, the pickups or the bridge. Since it's almost impossible that two pickups could exhibit the same fault, that leaves the string and the bridge. Given that it doesn't sound quieter acoustically, it's almost certainly the string. Given that it's the easiest thing to change, it's the first place to start.

I once had a set of acoustic strings which sounded fine acoustically, but with a magnetic soundhole pickup the top E was almost inaudible. Somehow, they had made it with a far less ferromagnetic type of steel than the rest of the set... I have no idea how.

It could be naughty pixies of course ... all faults we find that doesn't have an obvious cause ... we have a box at Oil City called the 'Naughty Pixies' box where the harnesses and pickups under their influence go ... till I can find a suitable remedy. 

So my new pack of bass strings finally arrived and I replaced all the strings.  Lo and behold, D string is fine.  So top marks for everyone above who said it was a dud string.  Thanks.  I'm shocked because how can a string sound full when unplugged, and only be dead when plugged?  So confused. 

As I said above, i'm new to bass and in all my years of playing 6 string electrics I've never had this happen to me once.  Is this type of thing more apparent on bass strings because they're thicker, or have I just been really lucky with my 6 string electrics that I've not had a dud string.  This phenomenon is so completely new to me. 

LionAquaLooper said:

So my new pack of bass strings finally arrived and I replaced all the strings.  Lo and behold, D string is fine.  So top marks for everyone above who said it was a dud string.  Thanks.  I'm shocked because how can a string sound full when unplugged, and only be dead when plugged?  So confused. 

As I said above, i'm new to bass and in all my years of playing 6 string electrics I've never had this happen to me once.  Is this type of thing more apparent on bass strings because they're thicker, or have I just been really lucky with my 6 string electrics that I've not had a dud string.  This phenomenon is so completely new to me. 

You've been unlucky. A string that's fine acoustically but dud electrically is *extremely* rare - apart from the one I mentioned above, I think I've come across it only once more, and that's from restringing literally thousands of guitars professionally. A string that's duff acoustically as well - because it just doesn't resonate properly, due to some sort of manufacturing fault - is more common, but still not particularly so - I think I've had a few tens at most, although I did once have two successive A strings in packets of D'Addario phosphor bronze acoustic strings like that, they must have had a problem with the winding machine that day... with the second, I did begin to doubt it was a string problem, but couldn't find any other explanation, so fitted a third one and it was fine.

Have you owned the bass from new? If so, are the strings original? Many lower priced instruments are supplied with correspondingly lower priced strings.

I know a guy with corrosive sweat. He can transform a brand new low E string from over-bright to sounding like it is made of rope in eight days. The gap between the turns of the outer wrap fills with gunge. 

Funkfingers said:

Have you owned the bass from new? If so, are the strings original? Many lower priced instruments are supplied with correspondingly lower priced strings.

I know a guy with corrosive sweat. He can transform a brand new low E string from over-bright to sounding like it is made of rope in eight days. The gap between the turns of the outer wrap fills with gunge. 

No, I bought it used.  So I'm afraid I don't even know how long the previous owner had it, if he changed the strings and if so, how long ago.  But I've heard a lot of bassists who don't change their strings at all because they like that tone but their strings just sound muffled, not dead like this one lol =)  

I wouldn't mind so much if bass strings were cheap but they're much more expensive than 6 string electric strings!  So I hope this doesn't too often in the future because I don't plan to change bass strings much since I too like that muffled bass tone.

LionAquaLooper said:

No, I bought it used.  So I'm afraid I don't even know how long the previous owner had it, if he changed the strings and if so, how long ago.  But I've heard a lot of bassists who don't change their strings at all because they like that tone but their strings just sound muffled, not dead like this one lol =)

Is it possible that the D was from a different set? ie did it have the same coloured cotton wrap at the ends, same colour/type of ball ends etc? And the same coloured metal - eg if it was nickel and the others were stainless steel there would be a fairly large difference in electric signal.

LionAquaLooper said:

I wouldn't mind so much if bass strings were cheap but they're much more expensive than 6 string electric strings!  So I hope this doesn't too often in the future because I don't plan to change bass strings much since I too like that muffled bass tone.

If you like the more muted sound of old strings, the good news is that you'll probably never need to change them. Whatever was wrong with the D string is almost certainly not something that happened over time, it was always like that.