I'm sure there are cases where better judgement would say to take it to a professional for setup, and others where that would be crazy. For example, for someone who's generally handy with such stuff and has purchased an old junker for $150, that would be crazy.
"Absolutely required." (Let's skip over the question of whether round wound vs flat wound string tension is that cut and dried.) In this statement, we see something that is really all over the talkbass, on the electric bass side anyway: our perspective is more limited than we realize.
You don't have to think very hard about it, before it will occur to you that there are bass owners out there who could probably manage a string setup, and basses where a pro setup isn't economically justifiable (let's skip over the question of whether a pro setup is always going to be as good as it should be!)
When you think about someone's advice on a favorite string, you don't have to think very hard before it will occur to you that some bass players out there sound very different from how you'd like to sound, to the extent that if they like a string, most likely you won't like it.
But thinking about stuff like that hurts our heads, so talkbass is full of stuff like "absolutely required!" and "best strings, hands down!"
There's my rant for the holidays!
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