Rattles and adjustments

[Jeff Tranauskas]

Originally Posted by stan haskins

I was doing some recording last night with the Shen. The rattle has gotten incredibly irritating, so after about an hour I put a folded up washcloth between the tailpiece and the top. No more rattle! I guess that means the rattle is coming from my TP cable . . .

While there is a certain "muting " effect from the cloth, I found that in some ways, it evened out the tone (the A string is less wolfy, the open G not as abrasive). I did lose a little bit of volume, but the sound was better on the video, and it seemed like I was playing easier, too, by not needing to avoid rough-sounding notes.

Any thoughts? Does anybody intentionally mute their tailpiece?

Stan,
I had a Shen 3/4 Willow that did the same thing. I muted the tailpiece with an old Tshirt. That worked well. On my Bulgarian bass I do the same thing. The rattle in my current tailpiece is due to my use of an electrical terminal block to anchor the cable. It was an adhoc repair that I made that never was properly addressed. So for now I just use the rolled up cotton cloth to quite the rattle. I have seen Edgar Meyer do the same thing.