String Action | How LOW should you GO?

A low action may give you more facility to play fast licks, but you risk losing a lot of your available range in terms of timbre and volume. With a slightly higher action you can still play soft, but you can also hit the strings harder. Set your action high enough so that the sound is big, but low enough so that you get a slight bit of rattle when you really dig in. “I like the action, or string height, to be quite low,” Mark King once told SBL. “My bass is set at 2.9mm at the 12th fret across the neck.”

[ThrockmortonJGildersleeve]

The bass turtle recommends the lowest and slowest action possible 🐢🎸

[Shred_The_Weapon]

I am very glad to have seen this particular reel. It put me a mind of when I was 20 and in the market for a professional grade bass to follow up the economy Epiphone P bass I began on. The retailer who sold me the Epiphone showed me two different Ibanez models, a four string with a passive electronics at a five string with active. The first string bass sort of resisted me, something which I was kind of used to. The fourth string model had such low action that I was afraid I would rip it up if I tried something on it. The retailer told me that the culprit was how thumbsy a player I was; I plucked too hard. When he was attempting to let me in on was how someone playing a bass with lower action will hopefully lighten up their right hand attack, permitting the thump from the pickups to work on its own.

[claudioolate]

Hahaha who is editing this🤣🤣
100% comedy, he needs an award

[drbassface]

At Berklee, I was told to raise my action….
Low is great for slap.
High enough to dig in without a Rasp, is great for fingerstyle tone.
Too much low action causing Fingerstyle rasp going on in YouTube Videos, IMO.

[SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

I'm considering raising the action of my bass because it seems a little low. This video was kinda helpful because watching it I realized I could apply epoxy to the bottom of my nut and sand it down to where I want it. I got plenty of turns on bridge saddles to raise those.

[xboxdonut]

Bro I can never get my tone like that I gotta practice more this way

[marselluswallace]

Are you supposed to adjust your pickup height whenever you change your string action using the bridge adjusters?

[jbaranowski]

Funny :) I'm setup my bass right now and I wondering how low I can go :P But I think that too low action even though give me good slap action it probably won't be appropriate in a band situation. Maybe except black metal thing lol

[glaceonus]

I feel like higher sounds better. But that might also be because my fender has a higher action. The fender probably just sounds good.😅

[chrismcgary]

So I should bring my trus rod out a little and drop the 🤔🤔🤔

[BASS.GUlTAR]

will the sound differ if the strings aren't that new? like 10 month-old strings? (kinda rusty ngl)

[jakubjungle]

Any idea what brand/gauge these strings are?

[willb]

Well, perhaps you should ‘measure’ it - mainly because there’s no useful information here.

[slipknotmaggot]

Team high action high tension thick strings and low tuning

[atulya]

"slightly""too" high🗿

[austindurham]

I swear, no matter what i do to my bass, i have insane fret buzz

[stevenjames]

Sounds terrible to everyone who is not a bass player