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I'm fighting a little but of an uphill battle on this one, but I've got a friend who's asked me to set up his Epiphone SG bass. Honestly the instrument is pretty terrible, the bottom of the neck pocket isn't even the same thickness all the way across, so the neck sits at a nice little angle with the bass side being higher than the treble.

Anyway, I haven't had much luck finding any suggestions about relief and action measurements for a short scale bass, and I haven't logged the same kind of hours as a player on the bass as I have on the guitar to intuitively sort it out, or to even have a good sense of what high action in this context is. Any help with some general targets would be much appreciated. Right now the relief is sitting at about .013, the action at the 17th fret is 3/32 on the E and 7/64 on the G (thanks to the wonky neck pocket). I'm not getting much buzzing, except around the middle of the neck on the low E, but only if I really dig in, it seems to me that at least some of that is just the nature of a short scale bass, but?

Relief is maybe a bit much which can cause buzz in the center of the board. But I think the action is a bit low myself on the low E and high on the G. Typically looking to be about 8/64-5/64 for action.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Like Brian has stated, a little higher action results in better bass tone.

What it seems like too is that if the relief is too much and the fretboard has a bit of "ski-ramp" to it on the bass side it might be worth doing a fret level?