Questions for Dallas Strings. How high are your strings off the fingerboard? What brand of strings are you using? Has your bass neck done a "banana?", ie if you lean the bass backwards until you can sight down the glue line of the fingerboard to the neck towards the bridge is that line straight or concave? Do your strings feel stiff when you press them to the fingerboard at the base of the neck? The maximum clearance for each string is usually about where the octave harmonic sounds, ie the 1/2 length of string where you might start regularly using the thumb. Has your bass been properly set up by an experienced luthier?
These are additional factors contributing to the ease of producing a good even sound with the thumb regardless of whether you have a callous, where you press on your thumb or if you brace your thumb or not. It is reasonable to expect that a very low action (Rabbath or jazz?) won't give as many problems as a higher action because less weight is needed to anchor the string and the string is less bent (therefore less damped by the thumb flesh). Classical players often like a high, but not too high, action to enable more bow weight and help with harp-like rather than struck pizzicato.
Cheers......
DP
These are additional factors contributing to the ease of producing a good even sound with the thumb regardless of whether you have a callous, where you press on your thumb or if you brace your thumb or not. It is reasonable to expect that a very low action (Rabbath or jazz?) won't give as many problems as a higher action because less weight is needed to anchor the string and the string is less bent (therefore less damped by the thumb flesh). Classical players often like a high, but not too high, action to enable more bow weight and help with harp-like rather than struck pizzicato.
Cheers......
DP
