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Has anyone found a retrofit bridge for Sire V7 Vintage 5-string


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Hi All

Last year I bought a Sire V7 Vintage from another BC'er.  It's a great 'no fear' touring bass and aside from some difficulty balancing intonation and string height of my B-string when loaded through the body, I've had no major issues with it...but I'd like to make some improvements, starting with a new bridge.

Has anybody successfully retrofitted a high-mass bridge to one of these without having to drill new screw holes and retaining through-body stringing?

Has anybody else had issues with B-string height and intonation when strung through body?  

To get the string in tune, I've had to bring the saddle so far back, the B-string is bent at close to a right-angle over the saddle to get it through the body (see photo), causing obvious issues when attempting to correctly intonate.

Any experience/advice would be appreciated and gratefully received.  Thanks for reading.

IMG_2844.jpg

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There's a long thread on TB about this with several suggested replacements but all needed drilling - https://www.talkbass.com/threads/sire-v7-5-string-bass-replacement-bridge-tuners.1240782/

From your pic, the bridge and through body holes on the Sire just seem to be about half an inch too far north to stand any chance of intonating the B. A couple of pics on the TB thread have a similar problem with the B so looks to be a basic design fault.

Edited by ikay
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The bridge on the non-vintage 5 string is fine, might be worth messaging Sire and seeing if they'll send you one seeing as that's a design flaw.

 

I remember the 4 string V7 having this problem at launch, weird that they would go back to making the same mistake with the Vintage versions.

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Had a quick look on AliExpress (after a bridge upgrade myself) and this looks suitable:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/5-String-IB-Electric-Bass-Transbody-Bridge-Chrome-Behind-the-strings-Bridge/32834794882.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.219.3ee0777bXrr8m5&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_4_10152_10065_10151_10344_10068_10130_10324_10342_10547_10325_10343_10340_10341_10548_10696_10192_10190_10084_10083_10618_10307_10301_10303_5711215_10313_10059_10184_10534_100031_10103_10627_10626_10624_10623_10622_5711315_10621_10620_5722415,searchweb201603_25,ppcSwitch_4&algo_expid=98320dcb-bdd8-4e4f-ad32-ce4cf1089ef2-34&algo_pvid=98320dcb-bdd8-4e4f-ad32-ce4cf1089ef2&priceBeautifyAB=0

You'll need to drill new mounting holes but it has 18mm spacing and the part the strings run over looks much less chunky than the Fender style one so the break angle shouldn't be as sharp. The difficult part with finding a replacement bridge for the Sire is that it has 6 mounting screws all along the back so your options for drilling new holes there is limited.

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53 minutes ago, lemmywinks said:

Had a quick look on AliExpress (after a bridge upgrade myself) and this looks suitable:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/5-String-IB-Electric-Bass-Transbody-Bridge-Chrome-Behind-the-strings-Bridge/32834794882.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.219.3ee0777bXrr8m5&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_4_10152_10065_10151_10344_10068_10130_10324_10342_10547_10325_10343_10340_10341_10548_10696_10192_10190_10084_10083_10618_10307_10301_10303_5711215_10313_10059_10184_10534_100031_10103_10627_10626_10624_10623_10622_5711315_10621_10620_5722415,searchweb201603_25,ppcSwitch_4&algo_expid=98320dcb-bdd8-4e4f-ad32-ce4cf1089ef2-34&algo_pvid=98320dcb-bdd8-4e4f-ad32-ce4cf1089ef2&priceBeautifyAB=0

You'll need to drill new mounting holes but it has 18mm spacing and the part the strings run over looks much less chunky than the Fender style one so the break angle shouldn't be as sharp. The difficult part with finding a replacement bridge for the Sire is that it has 6 mounting screws all along the back so your options for drilling new holes there is limited.

Not sure i would want a bridge with Ibanez engraved on it attached to a Sire. :-)

Tis a nice looking bridge though.

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