old thread, oh well sorry for reviving it. if you have a peavey millennium plus and you want to get low action here is what you do. take those quadrajust (the little black lateral string spacing things) out of the saddles, they are pretty much worthless. they slide right out of the side of the saddle if you remove the it. then get a drill with a very small bit and make a small groove in the top of the saddle by holding the drill parrallel to the top of the saddle, be careful to put the groove in the very center of the saddle. the metal is extremely soft and it should take no more than 20 seconds to do this to each saddle, you could even file it with a butter knife if you really wanted to(seriously). this will lower the action allot(however tall the quadrajust piece of metal is plus how ever far down you go with your groove). This is allot easier to do than a shim. i shimmed my millennium plus and the saddle alteration worked ten times better, and it also seemed to help the tone by taking a superflous piece of metal out of the path to the body. if you dont like it, just put the piece back in the saddles-no harm done, or buy new hipshot A style bridge saddles($20). My millennium plus now has the lowest action of any bass i have ever played-with no rattle. I have tried to figure out why, and the reason(other than the alteration) i think the action can go so low is because of the 35" scale. the extra tension causes the eliptical pattern the strings follow while vibrtating to shrink to a smaller diameter allowing you to lower the strings closer to the board. the lower they get to the board the more the player percieves a softness or bendability in the strings, so paradoxically the 35" scale creates physically higher tension, perceived lower tension, and lower action. this bass smokes, and i mean really smokes, all of my other basses including my sadowsky mv4 as far as playability and low end resonance.
Very interesting.
