Several things can cause tonal changes in the lowest strings, including –

If the string saddle is far back, due to intonation, it can cause the (stiff) low strings to round the front edge of the saddle poorly, which means that the string is not lying solid on the front part of the bridge, and can (in some cases) create a subtle muddiness (because the string length is changing very slightly as the string vibrates). Rare but can occur.

The action, height, can produce muddiness occasionally. Experimenting with higher or lower action by adjusting the height of the saddle may make a difference. (Be sure to adjust truss first to get flat fretboard if it has moved; see Megatar Owner’s Guide for correct trussrod adjustment procedure. Anyone can download a free copy in the documents section of the Megatar main website.)

Your playing, your touch, can make a difference, though it’s hard to specify.

Your particular amp or effects chain can make a difference. Try others at the guitar store to see if that’s it. Try removing all effects. Most likely problem effects would include chorus, and certain kinds of reverb. ‘Helpful’ effects would include the ‘aural exciter’ type of effect. And when your EQ kills all the highs, the ear cannot track low notes well, and can in some cases be perceived as muddiness.

If you’re tuning to something other than standard notes, then you may not get the best tone because the gauges and tension may not be optimum. If using a non-standard tuning, you may have to use non-standard gauges, to change the tension, to get the best sound. Careful experiment is the only way to find out.

Of course, do realize that all tapping instruments have a different sound than a plucked bass. If you ‘pluck’ your bass with a pick right next to the bridge saddle, you are triggering the string very similar to what tapping does. And this will not have the same soft pop as a bass plucked with vigor near the fretboard.

Other brands/kinds/gauges of strings — we’ve not experimented with other types. When designing, we wanted to use the most commonly available type of string, so that players could easily find strings that would work well. For this reason it’s difficult to say how other types of strings will work, and so cannot report much about that. If using other types of strings, you are the pioneer, and so you’ll need to experiment and compare.

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He had in his possession a TrueTapper Eclipse, and his Stick, and so me made identical recordings — minimal effects, same settings — and as a further comparison he also recorded the same song on a cheap Strat-knockoff.

It’s a truism that in sound recording, your effects and amplifier chain may have a greateer effect upon your sound than the particular instrument you are using!

And so it is that in recordings, or videos you see on YouTube, it can be difficult to evaluate the ‘natural’, unprocessed sound. If the musician is really skillful with his amp and effects chain, he may create what kind of sounds like a natural sound, but really it may be highly processed.

Hearing the same song, by the same player, with the same settings, using minimal effects, allows you to compare. (Naturally, when you yourself are performing, you may wish to use your effects and amp to maximum benefit, just as other musicians do!)

If your ears are keen, you can also hear, on these unprocessed recordings, the subtle effect of the Buzz Feiten Intonation System, making the Megatar sound slightly more ‘in tune’ as the song is played.

So the benefit of this particular set of recordings is that they are, to the best of our knowledge, the only time that a one-for-one recording has been made. (Mr. Goos who made these recordings was not requested to make them, nor was he compensated in any way for the recordings. He was just interested in this very same question, and kindly allowed us to have copies, so you could hear them too.)

These three recordings allow you to compare the sound of the instruments for yourself.

Let your ears be the judge …

http://megatarcomparison.com/mobius-megatar-chapman-stick-songs/

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However, after that he went further, and along with super-luthier Greg Back of Southern California, they developed a whole set of adjustments you make to the bridge saddles. In effect, you are intentionally make the strings precisely ‘out of tune’ by an exact amount. What exact amount? Why the exact amount that your ears need to hear because of the way ears actually work.

It took them five years, they report, to uncover by tedious experiment, the exact formula that makes human ears hear strings as being ‘in tune.’ We shouldn’t be too hard on Feiten and Back for taking five years; after all, it took piano tuners much longer to develop the ‘stretch tunings’ that are now used on pianos worldwide.

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It can slightly change the sounds coming out of the pickups because pickups are not spaced identically on the ‘bass’ and the ‘melody’ side, but this shouldn’t be much of an issue.

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