The mystery of the A string!

[Sjael]

So I grabbed my faithful Prophecy Les Paul from it's faithful case one fateful Thursday afternoon. I plugged her in, played some licks, everything was fine. I threw in some distortion, and broke out the intro to Neverender by Coheed & Cambria. That's when it started.

 

Now, I've only been playing for around six months, so forgive me if I use improper terminology here, I'm no pro. I broke into the intro:

e---------------
B---------------
G---------------
D--66-66-44-22--
A--44-00-00-00--
E---------------

 

The horror.

 

The open A string was simply too loud. I tried again thinking I had made an error in my playing. Nope. The open A simply drowned out whatever I played on the D. "Alright, it's been in it's case for a couple of days, maybe a bridge saddle slipped or something?" No, they are all exactly where I left them, the intonation is fine according to my tuner. It shouldn't be binding at the nut, due to the graphite employed therein. It was just wrong.

 

I'm an extremely kinesthetic learner so I prefer to figure things out for myself, else I would have been attacking the forums at first notice. I tried everything I could think of, the problem disappeared with the use of a capo, which to me suggested the problem was at the nut or thereabouts. I proceeded to tune down a half-step, which solved the problem, only now my guitar was down a half-step. In defeat, I put the guitar back in it's case, hoping I was just imagining things, and the issue would be gone in the morning.

 

Whatever celestial being wrote my life must have had a chuckle to himself at that point. No dice. Still massively resonant. As I hung my head in defeat, my brother walked into the room. Swallowing my pride, I asked if he had any ideas. "Tried changing the battery?" How could a dying battery make one single note so castrophonic? Reluctantly, I swapped in a new 9V.

 

I then proceeded to bang my head against a nearby wall for 15 minutes. My Les Paul has never sounded better.

 

 

 

 

 

So any of you guys had a problem like this? A seemingly simple problem, but with a resolution you typically wouldn't even consider?

[Memphs1978]

the bad thing with " active " pick ups is when the batt dies... its very very very bad.. lol but im glad it was easy nuff to fix good on ya man!!

[scarrabri]

wow i would have changed the strings bought new pickups ,and maybe had the neck off lol good for you bro,best wishes scarrabri

[Bender 4 Life]

UPSTROKES man............upstrokes

when you use an open string in a broken or partial chord, your stroke should hit the open string last.

try it, you'll like it.

[Sjael]

UPSTROKES man............upstrokes

when you use an open string in a broken or partial chord' date=' your stroke should hit the open string last.

try it, you'll like it.[/quote']

 

This is an interesting point. I only put the basic pattern the power chords follow, there are actually two successive strokes of each 'chord, and I usually alternate down/up, because to my ear they both sound identical.