String Help Needed

[Omnipharious]

Sorry for the vague title, I can't think of anything better to name it.

Trying to keep it short: I have a bass that I re-finished, put new pickups on, blah blah, and it has a somewhat bowed neck, so the action has to be up somewhat high to keep it from really buzzing; it still has a little buzz on the 1st and 2nd frets on the D string, and on the 1st fret of the A string. I don't know what strings are on it now, but they're roundwound, and they're a year old (and the G snapped). I was thinking, would getting larger, or smaller gauge strings help keep down the fret buzz, allowing me to lower the action? I was thinking smaller gauge strings would do it, but I didn't want to waste $20+ without someone else's input.

Here are some (probably useless) references of the action:

[ixlramp]

I could drive a truck between the strings and the highest fret

Looks like you have serious back-bow (the ends of the neck are lower than the centre). This means the truss rod is too tight. Before bed loosen it 1/6th of a turn, leave the bass vertical on a stand overnight, next day check the curvature. Repeat until the neck is flat, no more than 1/6th turn per day. Then lower your action.

To check the curvature of the neck, fret a string at fret 1 with your left hand and at the highest fret with your right elbow. Tap the string halfway between with your right hand. Ideally there should be a credit-card sized gap between string and fret.

This will solve the problem without changing your string gauges.

[Pilgrim]

I tend to agree - the first thing to do is to perform a proper setup as outlined by the stickies in the Repair Forum. After that, you should be OK without a change of strings - and you should be able to re-adjust the setup if you do end up changing strings.

Failing to do a setup will result in your problems remaining - when they most likely don't need to.

ALL BASIC SETUP QUESTIONS ANSWERED HERE

[Omnipharious]

Oh, sorry, I was being too short with my description. The truss rod nut was completely stripped when we first looked at it (I really have no idea why, since we bought it new), so the neck bow is just a problem that I've had to deal with; that's why I needed new strings that would have a the correct tension to maybe be able to lower the action a bit.

[ixlramp]

Ah ... which way is the neck bowed? I assume it's back-bowed. If it's back bowed then tighter strings (larger gauge), and vica versa.

[Omnipharious]

Originally Posted by ixlramp

Ah ... which way is the neck bowed? I assume it's back-bowed but try the above to find out. If it's back bowed then tighter strings (larger gauge), and vica versa.

Backwards, but we routed a bit of the wood out in the neck socket of the body, and got it to bow a good bit less, but the action is still kinda high.