Ibanez SR500E setup question

Anybody know what this “slid-able saddle lock screw” does?

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You talking about the one that lets you vary the spacing between the strings? You just loosen it up and then you can move the spacing between that string slightly if you want. There’s a video on the Ibanez website that shows this feature.

ETA link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=38&v=FZT-NUPVhdg&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=IbanezGuitar?t=0m30s

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Yep that’s the one, thank you

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Not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but thought I’d share:

I’ve just spent around half an hour trying to set the intonation on my E string, but nothing I did made any difference. Then I finally found the answer to my issue in the below video (at around 1:10). So apparently, adjusting the intonation screw is sometimes not enough to make the saddle move. You need to give it a nudge with the screwdriver and make sure there’s no slack in it.

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This fellow is a legend, I learnt a lot from his series. It’s amazing how simple something can be and make such a massive difference.

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I’m slowly getting there, but I have a question again.

I’ve adjusted the intonation on the E string, and now it’s more or less perfect when tuned to E, but when I tune it to D then it’s off again by a bit. (2-3 bars on the tuner. I don’t know what the unit of measurement is.)

Is this normal? Do people adjust the intonation every time they change the tuning?

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Those are probably cents (or multiple of cents), where 100 cents equal a half-tone difference.

I would say that it is normal that the intonation needs to be re-checked as you change tuning (there probably is a good mechanical explanation for this that guys like @Korrigan might be able to provide).

However, the question is also how accurate you need that intonation to be? Do you expect to play a lot around the 12th bar or not? Some bass players “never” go beyond the 5th fret :grin:I am not saying you should be sloppy with setting up your bass, just be aware of what it is you want to achieve.

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Well I’m new to this, so don’t really know what my expectation should be. I definitely don’t hear the difference, but that’s not saying much… I also didn’t notice a couple of weeks ago that the Highway to Hell recording I was playing along to was tuned to 430 Hz until someone pointed it out to me. :slight_smile:

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Maybe I’m being too anal about the setup again, but does anyone know a way to check that the height adjustment screws on the two sides of a saddle are set to equal height? It’s so crowded there and they’re so tiny and dark that I can’t see :poop:.

When I got my “new” Yamaha, the action was set quite high. One of the things I did was lower the saddles all the way down to the bridge. Then I raised them again by turning the screws on both sides of each saddle the same amount of times. That way, they were pretty much the same height on both sides. I did some final adjustments by eye, but that probably wasn’t that important or relevant.

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