SR-Love

Thank you for providing this info. Unfortunately, the wide-angle lens of the camera shows the distances between the string riders somewhat imprecisely. Measured with a ruler, the string rider of the G string is closest to the pickup, followed a little behind by the D, A and E riders at a somewhat equal distance. I don't know, but maybe this has something to do with the fact that I play flatwound strings, that are on this bass too. For comparison I tried Fender 9050L flatwounds on this bass and the string riders had to be placed the same way all the way to the front, as it is the case with the Thomastik flatwounds. Additionally, I took the Thomastik strings off my Ibanez SR5000 bass and put them on my Yamaha RBX 774 bass which has also 1-string bridges and had no problems to adjust the intonation. I played the Yamaha Bass many years and put a wide variety of strings on it and never came across the problem that the intonation couldn't be adjusted, or the string riders were close to the stop.

I'm living in Germany. For my SRMS5 bass, I already contacted the German Ibanez distributor. They said the bass lost its warranty because it was bought in Japan. But they send me a freeway ticket to let their quality control check the bass and want to try if they can help me anyway. Looking forward to the result. Replacing the mono-rails for about 0.5 mm towards the pickups wouldn't be an easy task, because they are sunk into the body. So the routings for the mono-rails have to be enlarged towards the pickups first, leaving open holes behind. A good luthier might be able to do the job with a satisfying outcome. But it will probably be expensive because of the considerable amount of work involved.

@Woodinblack According to the serial number, the Ibanez SR5000-OL bass was produced in year 2016. The mono-rails of my Ibanez multiscale bass SRMS5 which was first build in year 2021 have an additional screw to adjust the string spacing, which my SR5000-OL bass hasn't. So the mono-rails of my SR5000-OL are an older model.

Thanks to all for contributing your intonation experience with Ibanez SR basses with mono-rails! Before I reply to individual posts, I would like to add that I bought a second Ibanez SR Bass, this time an 4-string SR5000. And you won't believe it - the bass has the same problem getting the intonation of the lowest string right. This happens with my favorite strings, a set of Thomastik JF344 with 0.100" gauge of the E-string, which is quite a normal gauge for an E-string. With the intonation screw fully screwed out, which shifts the saddle all the way forwards to the pickups, the tone on the 12th fret is still flat. Because there is still minimal space of about 1.5 mm at the end of the track, the saddle is sliding on, when the intonation screw is fully screwed out, I decided to buy and try a longer intonation screw, which is 35 mm long instead of 30 mm screw the bass came with. And with this longer screw with the saddles at the very end of the track, I was able to get just the right intonation adjustment for the E-string (see picture below). What sense do mono-rails have installed that much backwards?? That it saddles have to be shifted as far forwards as possible to get correct intonation. Which limits the adjustment for different string gauges and action height enormously and even hinders the correct intonation adjustment for some setups and strings?

Hello, does any Ibanez SR bass owner here got intonation issues that come from a misplaced bridge? A bridge with factory set saddles which were shifted almost completely towards the pickups in order to achieve correct intonation with the factory strings? Resulting in intonation issues if only little heavier string gauges are installed. Because there's no room to place the saddles further towards the pickups? I got an Ibanez SR Prestige SRMS-WK multiscale bass that has this issue. The issue can already be seen on the product image on its Ibanez site: SRMS5 | SR | ELECTRIC BASSES | PRODUCTS | Ibanez guitars After switching to a little heavier string set with a B-string with 0.136" gauge instead of the D'Addario 0.130" factory B-string, I wasn't able to adjust its intonation correctly, because the tone on the 12th fret is still 11 cents too low, with its saddle shifted maximal towards the pickups (see images below). An Ibanez SR 1345 owner showed me the same issue he got with a D'Addario EXL-165-5 string set with 45-65-85-105-135 gauges (see image below). To my understanding, this is the result of a misplaced bridge. Because it makes no sense to place a bridge in such a way, that its saddles are almost at the end of their adjustment range using standard factory strings. Is this too far back placed bridge only found on a few Ibanez SR basses, or is it more a general Ibanez SR bass issue? How did you solve this issue? Did you contact Ibanez or your dealer? Which solution did they offer?