Well I lodged my tax return earlier this week and the estimated return was a bit more than I was expecting so I went ahead and ordered a set of SD SSB-5s pups! I cheaped out on the postage though (hey it was free vs $38 for expedited!!) so will probably take 3-4 weeks to get here from the US. The new pots & caps rocked up yesterday but I think I'll wait until I have the new pups and install it all at the same time.

I also finally got around to doing a more thorough setup the other night. Now that the neck has had a chance to settle for a few weeks under tension it seems the warp issue has improved. Those following this thread may recall the issue I had; with the neck off of the body and the truss rod adjusted so the bass side was dead flat the treble side had some forward-bow and vice-versa, adjust the treble side dead flat and the bass side had some back-bow. When I first assembled it and did the initial setup the warp was quite noticeable - I set the relief on of the B string (.3mm) and the G string was nearly a 1mm! Checking the relief now the difference is only around .1mm between the B and G strings and with the neck angle altered now I have plenty of clearance on the G string saddle to adjust the string height. The other benefit I've noticed of changing the neck angle is that the strings sit higher off the body which, combined with the neck recess/reduction I did gives a bit more room to get the fingers under the strings for popping. I quite like slap style (I suck at it but I'm practicing!) so these mods have made it a bit more practical to do on this bass.

Overall I'm quite happy with how it's turning out - seems to play well now. No noticeable fret buzz with string heights set to 2.4mm on the bass side going down to 2mm on the treble side. If I get over excited though I still get that clacky string/fret noise and some fret buzz. I still need to develop my fretting and plucking technique. I've found this 5 stringer is less forgiving than my Yamaha 4 string - there's the wider neck, narrower string spacing and an extra string to keep muted but it also picks up every little bit of handling noise which makes my playing sound extra sloppy! I do have tapewounds on the Yamaha at the moment though and have found that they reduce quite a lot of handling noise but I don't recall the Yamaha giving me as much handling noise as the IB-5 does now back when I had roundwounds on it. At least with tapewounds it's not metal on metal contact between the strings and frets and being smooth there's no string talk to worry about. I may consider putting tapewounds on the IB-5 down the track. I'm also hoping better quality pups will help, I've used cheap chinese pups in guitars in the past and was never happy with the characteristics and sound they produced.