Low action for soft bassy tone?

[carl-anton]

Hi there

I'm getting my bass setup soon and were wondering what action height to go for. I have fairly high action now because I wanted more tone and less fretbuzz. However, I started wondering if lowering the action and playing lighter with my right hand will give me a softer more bassy sound. My hunch is that the higher the action the more tension the strings will have when playing fretted notes, simply because I have to use more force to fret the note, and this will give a more punchy sound. Playing a Stingray5 through a SWR rig I don't think I need punch as much as a soft bassy tone. I like to run the eq on the bass and the amp flat, so the sound should be in the bass and my hands.

Does this make any sense?

[walterw]

there's got to be a happy medium, where you can dig in a little and still have an easy to play instrument.

as you go higher with the action, it gets harder to intonate because the string is getting stretched more to push it down to the fret.

the trick if you still want high action is to keep the neck fairly straight and the nut fairly low, and just raise the saddles up. this gives you more clearance under the vibrating part of the string, which is what matters for tone (and buzz).

[carl-anton]

Thanks walterw - I guess action is all about finding the happy compromise between playability and tone then.

Is it your experience that the sound of the bass gets less punchy and more "soft" lowering the action? (granted, of course, that your plucking hand is playing accordingly to the string height, avoiding stringbuzz.)

[John Wentzien]

Lighten up a little on your plucking hand..
You'd be surprised on how much more "dynamic" you can get..
Even with lower action.
Turn up your amp if you need more "punch"

[carl-anton]

Yeah, that's what I've been experiencing already :-)

For me stringheight doesn't really matter in connection to playability. I'll have the action adjusted to fit the sound I want. I'll adjust my playingstyle accordingly.

[John Wentzien]

I recently dropped down a guage in strings also...(from 105-45 to 100-40)
Taking Jeff Berlin's advice..
Made a big difference for me!
The lighter strings actuallly sound quite a bit "fuller" to me.
They act more like a "string" than a solid "steel-bar" this is IMHO..
Depends a lot on your own preferance.

[carl-anton]

Originally Posted by John Wentzien

The lighter strings actuallly sound quite a bit "fuller" to me.
They act more like a "string" than a solid "steel-bar" this is IMHO..
Depends a lot on your own preferance.

That's excactly what I'm talking about. I switched from Blue Steels 50, 70, 85, 105, 128 to Hi Beams 45,65,85105,125 to obtain what your talking about (the Hi Beams being round core makes them more "string"like than steel bar like, IMHO). With regard to action, my thought was, that the higher the string is from the fretboard, the more force takes to fret a note, hence the string has higher tension and sounding more like a solid steel bar as you say.

[John Wentzien]

Round core stings usually have less tension than hex core.
It didn't take me too long to adjust after switching to "lighter" guage at all..

[Disraeli Gears]

If your strings are buzzing excessively with reasonably low action try adjusting the truss rod a slight bit. I have a bass that used to buzz like crazy no matter what unless the action was REALLY high, but a quick tweak of the truss rod completely fixed it!

[John Wentzien]

Originally Posted by Disraeli Gears

If your strings are buzzing excessively with reasonably low action try adjusting the truss rod a slight bit. I have a bass that used to buzz like crazy no matter what unless the action was REALLY high, but a quick tweak of the truss rod completely fixed it!

Set-up is crucial for low action!

[Pilgrim]

For soft bassy tone, move your plucking hand up over the end of the neck and brace your thumb against the side of the neck. BIG difference in attack and sound as compared to plucking over the pickups.

[carl-anton]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

For soft bassy tone, move your plucking hand up over the end of the neck and brace your thumb against the side of the neck. BIG difference in attack and sound as compared to plucking over the pickups.

Check

[mongo2]

Also, you can try lowering the pickups a bit and see if that helps.

[chadhargis]

So LOWERING your pickups would give you more bottom end? I would have thought it would have been the other way around.