First fret is generally harder because it’s right by the nut. There’s a few things that can make this worse.
- Your bass probably needs a setup. There’s a big thread on this:
You can pay a shop to do this for you, but it’s also easy to do yourself and a great skill to have. It soesn’t require any special tools. Here’s an excellent video:
- The nut might be too high. This is actually common and would be the first thing I would check after getting the action set up, if it still felt hard. It’s not hard to fix but trickier than a normal setup. You’ll probably want a shop to look at this. If you get a regular setup and there’s still a problem, this is easy to check - let us know if you still have a problem then.