Thought I'd check in - it's been a busy week or so with work, stocktake and all the EOFY joys that go along with it!

I've been doing some tinkering with the IB-5 here the there to make it more playable. My main concern was the lack of height adjustment on the G string - in the stock configuration the saddle was all the way down to the bridge baseplate with the string still sitting a little too high. The rest of the saddles were sitting just off of of the baseplate which then resulted in the height adjustment screws sitting proud of the saddles - which I don't like as those can be sharp suckers -easily fixed by shortening them though. Ideally I like to have the saddles sitting a little higher so there's room for adjustment down the track.

Wazkelly had a similar issue with is EX-5 over on his thread so he bought a replacement allparts bridge from realparts.com.au which he found to have lower minimum saddle height and seems to solve his issue. I was ready to pull the trigger and buy one as well but noticed the string spacing is 16mm. I checked the IB-5's stock bridge and the spacing is 18mm. The neck on the IB-5 is also a bit wider than the EX-5 so I think 16mm will be a little too narrow. Plus I actually prefer the 18mm spacing, coming from a 4 string bass I'm used to the wider spacing and also works a bit better for slap & pop style playing. The other complaint about the stock bridge is the steep string break angle from the saddle to the back of the bridge and being rear loading there's risk of scratching up the body trying to load strings in to it.

From my searching around the net there's not many options out there for an 18mm spaced bridge (in black), the cheapest I could find is a Gotoh bridge in Cosmo black (dark chrome) for around $120 or something higher end which offers '3D' adjustable saddles like from Schaller - not sure if I want to spend as much as I paid for the IB-5 kit on just the bridge at this stage.

So I'm determined to make use of the stock bridge for now and keep fine tuning the setup to see if I can end up with a nice playable bass then I might go all out on a fancy bridge, new tuners, pups etc.

My thought to solve the string height issue was to reprofile the tongue on the neck so the neck angle sits further back in relation to the body (think archtop, but at a shallower angle) which will then allow the saddles to come up. Due to the curved shape of the neck pocket shimming didn't seem like a good idea so the neck came off and met the belt sander to reprofile the tongue on the neck - I did it over a few attempts, taking a little bit off at a time, reattaching and restringing to check. Here's a pic of the neck profile after final sanding:




With the initial setup the bridge position also ended up being too far forward resulting in the saddles having to moved back a fair way (which doesn't help the string break angle!) so whilst I had it all apart I moved the bridge back 10mm. Not sure if it was the best idea but it's done anyway; if I end up replacing the bridge down the track it will be another set of holes to have to fill! 2 holes are now visible so I'll need to fill or cover them at some stage.

Last night I reassembled the whole thing, loaded in a new set of 135-45 D'Addario nickels and tuned it up to pitch. Made some rough adjustments to the saddle heights and intonation to get it playable. Initial results seem positive - the saddles are at a more manageable height and position on the bridge... new strings sound and play a heck of a lot better than those ones that came with the kit! I think the kit B string was only a 130 or maybe even a 125, I had to widen the nut to fit the 135 in, but the extra tension has made a world of difference, doesn't sound and feel as 'flabby'.

Tonight I'll spend more time to dial in the setup once the neck as had a chance to settle for 24 hours.

I still need to work on the electronics side of things - the low output is really annoying as I have to crank the amp right up to get decent volume out of the thing but in turn it also boosts all the background static and noise. I'm going to try wiring a pup direct to another output jack just to take the guitars wiring out of the equation, if the output strength is the same I'll know the stock pots and output jack are working okay and that it's the pups themselves that are the issue. The pup height is about as high as I can go, any higher and they'll interfere with the strings if playing up on the higher frets.