String flexibility

Hello all!

I have this curiosity nagging me inside out whenever I see someone playing their base on youtube (also Josh in his intros to the lessons). They sometimes stretch the string that they are playing up or down on the fretting hand way farther than its location. This makes their string look like almost made out of rubber for me.

Whenever I see this, I try it if I am holding my bass but my strings (D and G for example) feel extremely rigid to be doing what they are doing seemingly effortlessly.

I got my original strings changed when I took my bass to a local shop for setup and maintenance and the guy put 40-95 set of gauges stating that this will make the feel of the strings waaay softer.

When I came home I had the feeling that he had the action set too high for me so I got it back down following youtube instructions.

-Setting it just fine for no Fret noise
-Tuning after every change and moving quarter turns only
-Checked the tuning and intonation in the end.

But still my strings won’t stretch out as they do in these videos. I couldn’t find a “Josh Intro” but I will update this message if I run into it again.

What do you guys think?

-String related?
-Setup related?
-Fretting hand strength?

3 Likes

My guess is fretting hand strength since you already have strings with a gauge that are considered ‘softer’.

I often have this experience when watching good players. Just look at how effortlessly some people use tapping while when I’m testing out if I can get a good tone I just can’t get a single one while using all the strength I have in my hand.

I also had this experience with guitar. Guitar players could bend the string so frigging far while I was sitting there “I don’t even reach the clean pitch a half tone above the fret with my bend.”

Sorry that I don’t have a solution but I don’t think there’s a trick to it after you checked the setup and string gauge.

5 Likes

Definitely.

4 Likes