Hey guys,
Hopefully someone can help me out here... What I've noticed in just the last few days, is that whenever I do hammer-on (especially at the 4th, 5th or higher frets), I get two tones. If, just for fun, I do consecutive hammer-ons up the fretboard, I can hear the one tone increasing (i.e. like I expect), and the other tone decreasing. Now, I'm totally aware of why there are two tones: one tone is from the string in the direction of the bridge, the other tone is from the string in the direction of the nut. As one gets shorter, the other gets longer, so I get two tones moving in opposite directions as I go up the fretboard.
So I understand that part... what I don't understand, is why this started happening to me all of a sudden! I've been playing for years and have never noticed this! Frankly, it's pretty annoying... songs that I'm playing with lots of hammer-ons, have discordant tones sounding that aren't as loud as the desired note, but are loud enough to hear and be annoying.
I'm assuming this is the product of something I've changed recently. I've changed two things.
(1) I adjusted my neck angle with a shim, in order to lower my action a bit.
(2) I changed strings. I don't remember what the old strings were. The new strings are GHS PF180 medium strings (11-13-16-24-10).
So that leaves me with two questions:
(1) Why did this suddenly start happening? Has anyone seen this crop out up of nowhere like this? (I guess physics probably dictates that both tones were always there, but that the undesired tone, i.e. between my finger and the nut, was muted in the past for some reason.)
(2) How can I mitigate this?
Thanks in advance for resurrecting my hammer-ons!
-Rob