I had a guy come by and set up my Ibanez. He said lower action is best for slap.
I recently bought a fender J bass. Brought it to a local shop for a set up because I thought action was too high… he said higher is best for slap, and said it was already too low.
Is one better than the other? I was under the impression a lower action would be best.
Thoughts?
I don’t slap because it’s not my style, but I would think that lower action would be better to have more control?
I set mine a bit higher, all those strings bouncing around need some room to, well, bounce around.
Both are great go slapping. Low action is good if you don’t slap and pop very hard. This would give very clean sound and effortless left hand movements.
If your style is more heavy handed, you’ll like a little higher action so your string won’t buzz too much. All 3 ladies that play for Prince I would assume would not have super low action Nik West and Ida Neison are slapping Goddesses both bend strings like guitars I can’t imagine playing that hard and have super low action. Rhonda Smith on the other hand may be a little lower because she does a lot of tapping.
Hard Slapping pioneer like James Jameson would definitely have higher action.
I have my basses setup both ways for slapping if there’s a lot of popping in the song I definitely favor higher action, it’s much easier to hook my index or middle finger under. Of course your mileage varies.
Jamerson slapped?
All I have ever heard here is low action, and definitely low action is all that ever worked for me for slap, FWIW. Try both and see what you think, but I can’t imagine slap working well with a high action at all, at least for me.
Larry Graham, that’s what I said no? Oops
Haha was wondering 
High action is terrible for slap.
It has to be low enough to get you that sweet and instant smack off of the fretboard.
Higher than super low but i doubt that high action is good for anything unless you are transitioning from Double bass, lol
Well that could be why I suck at it. Ha! Time to reevaluate
Closet slapper 
Everytime I say some thing like that I always have to check urban dictionary 
I don’t even slap that much and I bought a jazz bass just for slap because my Yamaha TRBX174 was a struggle to slap no matter how I set it up. 
That is something I was always wondering since I tried a little bit of slapping and it just didn’t work out: Is the string supposed to hit the fretboard or not? Thanks for clearing that up!
I really can’t imagine using high action for slap either. You would have to slap like a maniac if you want to hit the fretboard.
Yes, and lower action makes slap easier to do. You dont have go super saiyan to make it bounce of the fret.
This is a great question and it - and most everything else slap related - is covered perfectly in this gorgeous video by the legendary @JoshFossgreen (the action is talked about at 9:37)
It depends what you think “high” is… some people think that’s anything over 2.5mm. 5mm is pretty darned high to me.
raises hand 
Actually 2.5 is fine. Around 3, that’s good for picking, but over that - yeah that’s high for me.
