No buzzing at all Ken, in fact i do want to lower the action a bit. This might be ear fatigue but have just put the bass down from practice and what I tried during my session was opening the filter till the dead spots seemed to disappear then knocked off some of the treble on my preamp and it seemed to make a difference. Also just to check i put the old round wound E-string back on and again closed down the filter and didn't get the dead spot, so like you i'm inclined to think it's a bad string in the pack.
I've just had a look on-line and the cost of one E-string is almost half what I paid for a full set of strings from Guitar Centre in Palm Springs.
