hieronymous
Member
A few years back, I picked up a Fender Fatfinger - they were originally made by Groove Tubes, it's the thing you clamp on the headstock to "increase sustain" according to the advertising, or to eliminate dead spots.
I just bought it on a whim, experimented a little bit on my Fenders but never found a need for it. However, I noticed that my fretless M-85 with Alembic pickups and electronics has a dead spot at the D on the G string where the 7th fret would be (if it had frets). I thought maybe there was a groove in the fretboard, but recently realized that the 12th fret harmonic on the D string was dead sometimes too. So I thought, how about the Fat Finger? And guess what - it seems to have solved it! I was surprised, but confirmed it while messing around with a fuzz pedal (Z Vex Mastotron) - without the fuzz, the problematic D just dies, but with the Fat Finger all the notes sustain more or less equally (could do more research on this - there MIGHT be a new dead note but I haven't found it yet).
On to my question - the Fat Finger has a felt pad on one side, and some kind of silicone (?) pad on the other.
Should I worry about the silicone possibly damaging the headstock finish? Would it be safer to have the silicone on the front or the back? I believe it's a '71 - once I used some polish on the back of the neck and the finish came off on the cloth! Here are a couple of gratuitous pics (with serial # removed):
Maybe put another felt pad over the silicone?
I just bought it on a whim, experimented a little bit on my Fenders but never found a need for it. However, I noticed that my fretless M-85 with Alembic pickups and electronics has a dead spot at the D on the G string where the 7th fret would be (if it had frets). I thought maybe there was a groove in the fretboard, but recently realized that the 12th fret harmonic on the D string was dead sometimes too. So I thought, how about the Fat Finger? And guess what - it seems to have solved it! I was surprised, but confirmed it while messing around with a fuzz pedal (Z Vex Mastotron) - without the fuzz, the problematic D just dies, but with the Fat Finger all the notes sustain more or less equally (could do more research on this - there MIGHT be a new dead note but I haven't found it yet).
On to my question - the Fat Finger has a felt pad on one side, and some kind of silicone (?) pad on the other.
Should I worry about the silicone possibly damaging the headstock finish? Would it be safer to have the silicone on the front or the back? I believe it's a '71 - once I used some polish on the back of the neck and the finish came off on the cloth! Here are a couple of gratuitous pics (with serial # removed):
Maybe put another felt pad over the silicone?