I have had my Ibanez SR700 for about a year now and have never gotten along with it. Build quality and playability are fantastic but, as many of you have found, the Korean Bart MK1's and preamp kinda suck.
I had all the usual problems: poor string to string volume balance, harsh mids and treble when you roll them on and boomy mud when you roll up the bass. No growl to speak of and pretty sterile all around. Then only strings I had tried were the Elixers that came with it and a couple sets of slinky's.
Well, I got them to sound fantastic
Two simple steps.
1. Slam the pickups as low as they will go in the routes. There is a bit more than a 1/4 inch of space between the strings and pickups.
2. I put on a broken in but far from dead set of medium D'addario nickels.
I set the treble to ~65%, same for bass, and mids to about 75%
I have been playing it like this for about a week now and it sounds fantastic. Loads of growl with a very smooth but very present high end (easily as much growl as my L2000
). Roll off the mids a tiny bit for more warmth and roll on a tiny bit more for cut. No volume balancing problems at all. My theory is that the volume balance problem was a combination of the pickups being too close to the strings and the previous strings. I have heard that these pups use blades instead of poles so maybe lowering them evens out the magnetic field 
.
I was going to order some big singles for this bass but after playing it for the last week I think I just saved some money!
All you guys with 5501's and Ibbys with this setup, try lowering the pickups and put D'addario nickels on there before giving up.
I had all the usual problems: poor string to string volume balance, harsh mids and treble when you roll them on and boomy mud when you roll up the bass. No growl to speak of and pretty sterile all around. Then only strings I had tried were the Elixers that came with it and a couple sets of slinky's.
Well, I got them to sound fantastic
Two simple steps.
1. Slam the pickups as low as they will go in the routes. There is a bit more than a 1/4 inch of space between the strings and pickups.
2. I put on a broken in but far from dead set of medium D'addario nickels.
I set the treble to ~65%, same for bass, and mids to about 75%
I have been playing it like this for about a week now and it sounds fantastic. Loads of growl with a very smooth but very present high end (easily as much growl as my L2000
). Roll off the mids a tiny bit for more warmth and roll on a tiny bit more for cut. No volume balancing problems at all. My theory is that the volume balance problem was a combination of the pickups being too close to the strings and the previous strings. I have heard that these pups use blades instead of poles so maybe lowering them evens out the magnetic field .I was going to order some big singles for this bass but after playing it for the last week I think I just saved some money!
All you guys with 5501's and Ibbys with this setup, try lowering the pickups and put D'addario nickels on there before giving up.
