Double Bass String Height Poll

[davidAaronCarte]

Approx...
G 7mm
E 12mm
Spirocore Mittels
But that's all about to change, as I'm laying out plans for a Kay-by shower...(!)

 

[Peder Waern]

Right now:

G at 6.5 mm and E at 9mm.

Would like to raise the action about 1 mm more. Waiting for the strings to loosen up

 

[Martin-nl]

All my strings are at 10mm. Eurosonic lights. My cheap used bass was in such a terrible state when I bought it. Had to take it apart and rebuild (reshaping) it using alot of glue. I really had no idea how to do this. So when I found this cheap bridge I sanded it to shape and I was : "hee what the hee I will just make it 1cm, and maybe I'll meet someone who has a clue..." But it seems I am all alone playing doublebass in this town and I made a lucky guess.

 

[Gary Lynch]

From looking over all these post, I get the feeling a few members have not measured their string height correctly. A few of the measurements are just unbelievable to me?

G = 5 mm
D = 6 mm
A = 6.75 mm
E = 8 mm

Obligatos

 

[tornadobass]

A few of the measurements are just unbelievable to me?

Too high? Too low?

 

[Martin-nl]

Why is the height of the E more then the others? Is it for the volume?

 

[drurb]

Why is the height of the E more then the others? Is it for the volume?

For one thing, it has the largest diameter with the lowest fundamentals and, thus, requires the greatest clearance from the fingerboard in order to vibrate freely.

 

[Jake deVilliers]

Why is the height of the E more then the others? Is it for the volume?

The E string usually has the most mass. This makes the arc of the vibrating string larger than the A and so on across the board. So if you want to be able to pull equally hard on all four strings without string slap, you need to adjust the heights (and the camber) to suit.

 

[Martin-nl]

This actually makes sense. But with a height above like say 6mm it doesn't matter anymore does it?

 

[zeytoun]

G: 4mm
D: 6.5mm
A: 6.75mm
E: 9.5mm

I like it pretty good, but next bridge, I'll probably raise the G up to 5mm. The G *almost* feels too low at 4mm to dig in.

Any lower on the E, and I'd have to have a good luthier dress my FB, I think.

 

[peri75]

G 7.5MM
D 8.5
A 9.5
E 1.15
I'm currently using the Thomastik Superflexible medium string set.Any thoughts on these?

 

[FMartin]

6 to 10mm with Spiros (mittel), 7 to 12 now with Velvet Blues.

 

[horstenj]

Having little experience with a DB, I try to get the action on my Stagg EUB as low as possible. Now I have all strings at approx. 5 mm.

 

[ctxbass]

G to E, 9-12mm. Plain guts on top, wound guts on the bottom.

 

[Martin-nl]

Having little experience with a DB, I try to get the action on my Stagg EUB as low as possible. Now I have all strings at approx. 5 mm.

I played a Stagg electric upright once at the store. The height was even lower then 5mm, almost undoable for me to play with. But I'm guessing higher then 5mm might be too high for a bass like this. Bass sounded nice and I think the action might be just right at 5-7mm

 

[timobee4]

Spirocore Mittels @ 6-9
Guts @ 7.5-11

 

[Big B.]

What would you guys call the average end of the fingerboard? So many boards have different lengths that it is hard to tell where you guys are measuring from. Most basses I see have boards that stop at C or D but I saw one this weekend that stopped at Bb. Mine is quite long and goes all the way up to an F. I think measuring there will give me a higher measurement by comparison.

 

[tstone]

From a strict scientific point of view, you are right; for a fair comparison, the string height should be measured at the location of a particular note, say C5.

But from a practical point of view; the strings are typically only rising at the rate of about 0.2 mm per inch of string length, so the height difference between measuring at C5 versus F5 would be in the neighborhood of 0.4 mm.

Most players probably have a hard time measuring their string height with an accuracy better than 0.5 mm, so for the purposes of an informal poll, exactly where the measurement is taken is not highly significant.

 

[Big B.]

Fair enough. I have never actually measured my setups, I usually just go by feel so I will be interested to see the actual measurement.

 

[mr mastodon]

interesting about ray brown's setup. i had heard in a christian mcbride interview that ray brown's influence got him to drop his action. after a huge raise been dropping mine little by little in the last week).

there was some dude i met overseas who was trying to one up me i think (why, i don't know. he was clearly better than me.) he tried my bass and we talked about favorite bassists and i said "yeah, i like the more old school approach so i raised my action to get more oomph."

then he takes my E string and pulls it away from the fingerboard to indicate how high is action is. i swear it was 1.5 - 2 inches away. i almost started laughing. does anyone actually get their action that high by choice?