Drop in bridge alignment question

[G On Bass]

I bough an upgraded, 5 screw drop in replacement bridge for one of my 5 string basses. String spacing and all that stuff is the same. Brand names involved are not important.

This is a pic of where things line up with 'The Original' bridge.

These are pics with the 'The New' bridge.

As you can see there is a pretty noticeable offset. It is enough to move the B string off the poles and make it drop dramatically in volume. Oddly enough, there also seems to be a perceptible drop in the volume of the D string (it is on the middle poles of the lower pickup).



Here is my question: Can loosening the neck bolts and attempting t re-align this going to help? I'm hesitant to do because a.) the bolts have never been taken out and b.) the neck pocket seems pretty tight, and I'm not sure there is much play in it.

Thoughts?

 

[Turnaround]

Slacken the strings, partially loosen the neck screws and see if you can shift the neck to align better. Retighten the screws and bring the strings taut to check the alignment. Often a neck can be shifted enough even in a relatively close-fitting pocket. Don't be afraid to do it, it's pretty easy and if done carefully you won't do any harm.

 

[G On Bass]

Slacken the strings, partially loosen the neck screws and see if you can shift the neck to align better. Retighten the screws and bring the strings taut to check the alignment. Often a neck can be shifted enough even in a relatively close-fitting pocket. Don't be afraid to do it, it's pretty easy and if done carefully you won't do any harm.

Thanks. It's not that I'm a-feared to do it, I'm just trying to understand why it lines up with the original but not the new one. When I put the old one back on, it aligned as it was.

 

[BGF]

This happens with replacement bridges. One time I got a replacement bridge that was so off it made the E string so close to the end of the fret that it would slip over the side.
I sent it back and the next bridge made the strings line up perfectly. I just got a bad bridge.

Yours looks like it can be fixed with the neck shift. Good luck with it.

 

[G On Bass]

Thanks for your replies. The neck thingy didn't help (not much wiggle room on this bass), but I think I've found the issue:

It looks like the original bridge's holes are offset by a small amount. When I line up the bridges holes on top of each other, the saddles differ in location relative to the screwholes, so only the current bridge is going to work. No biggie as it's not a bad bridge at all. I'll hang on to the other one until some other bass comes along....

Thanks again!