NBD: What can I do w/zero-dollar upgrades? Ibanez Mikro 5

[steve_rolfeca]

Blame it on a short attention span, but I went to Detroit to check out a bunch of full-sized acoustic basses, and came home with a pint-sized electric 5-string.

5-string Mikro's are hard to find in Canada. I’ve been curious about them for a while, but not at $367 CAD with tax, and no gig bag included...

Guitar Center came to the rescue, with a clean open box GSRM5 including gig bag, for $169 USD. No playing wear, just a faint patch of buckle rash.

It would be fun to play as a regular B to G five-string, but if that doesn't work out, it would make an interesting 5-string baritone, a piccolo bass, or even tuned in 5ths as a sort of electric cello/guitar hybrid?

Lots of info on these in the Mikro Club thread, so I'll just mention what I noticed about this example on first inspection:

• At 6lb 13oz, it's heavier then a Hofner or my ABG, but still a featherweight for a 5-string.
• Lumber is surprisingly good, with some birdseye on the neck. The Jatoba fingerboard doesn't need feeding like the Indian Laurel I've seen on other cheap instruments lately.
• The matte poly sanding sealer protects the neck while giving a "raw wood feel", but it felt rough and grainy in spots.
• The CNC work is better than I expected. TIGHT neck pocket. Edges were crisp, screw holes perfectly aligned, etc.
• No fret sprout.
• Tuners better than expected.
• Crisp, open-sounding JJ pickups, lots of bite when you want it.
• Tone and volume contros have useful taper- it can easily go from a decent approximation of a modern active Jazz, to jazzy and mellow.
• The B string sounded better than it should under the circumstances.
• Good balance, seated or standing.
• String spacing is tight (16.5mm at the bridge, ~ 10.5mm at the nut), but doesn't feel as bad as I expected. Probably thanks to the reasonably full C-shaped profile.
• Feels cheap in the hand, as if those crisp CNC-cut edges didn't get any hand sanding before the sanding sealer was applied.
• Paint is good at ten feet, but poorly-filled pores and grain lines are visible here and there.
• Excess polishing compound in every nook and cranny.
• Intonation off by nearly a semitone at the 12th fret.
• E and B strings sound unnaturally loud and muffled.
• The overtone series behaves oddly at this scale length, or maybe it's the low tension. The volume drops off if I try to pick close to the bridge.

Obviously, I liked it well enough to pick it up, but it needs work before I would want to play it out, or even at home on a regular basis.

So, here is my to-do list:

• These have been around since at least 2013, so I don't understand why intonation is still an issue. Perhaps it's particularly hard to get a .45 to .130 set to intonate predictably at a 28.6 inches?
• Shielding is iffy.
• B string feels loose, (only 27lb tension), sounds hollow if you dig in. Would need to be tuned up a minor third (D through A#2) to feel like a normal 35" five-string.
• Cheap-feeling pots and barrel jack.

Here it is:

 

[steve_rolfeca]

I'm not trying to bling it out- nothing is going to hide the fact that this is a cheap over-achiever designed for children, and as a novelty travel bass.

I just want to make it a player at the moment, and get a better idea of where it's going to end up. Grab-and-go extended range bass, or maybe some sort of baritone or solo instrument.

First step was to fix the intonation. I can't see moving the bridge plate back, as then I'd have a pair of screw holes to fill in, and paint to re-touch. Putting a long-plate aftermarket bridge on it would be overkill, and there's still the narrow string spacing requirements to worry about.

Thankfully, I've been here before. If you go gently with a bench grinder, and then bevel the ends with a fine, single-cut bastard file, it's easy to shorten the screws. As long as you don't overheat them, there's no need to chase the threads. Shortening the springs is a breeze with a pair of side cutters.

I took between an 1/8th of an inch and about 3/16ths off each screw. Here it is with the treble saddles already treated, and the E and B saddles bottomed out against the end of of the unmodified screws:

As you can see, I should have shortened a couple of the strings a bit more, but that can wait for the next string change.

There was just enough clearance for perfect intonation with the stock strings. If I switch to something else later, I may have to look at shortening the "neck" of the saddles, or actually invest in a different bridge.

 

[shirojiro]

These Mikro basses are surprisingly nice and sound surprisingly good. Your observations are spot on imho.

I have a 4 string, flat black with black hardware. I got mine used on CL on a bit of a whim. I haven’t done any upgrades as it’s a cheapie and my expectations are still pretty low.

I think the Things I’d like to change are the strings and the bridge. I’d like a new bridge that allows full movement of the bridge pieces for intonation.

I considered changing the pickups, but honestly, the stock ones sound pretty good to me.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

With the intonation fixed, it's a lot nicer to listen to, and playable above the twelfth fret.

The B-string still bowed like a love-sick beagle. Think of that weird out-of-tune and then returning to pitch sound the Beatles got on the guitars in Helter Skelter...

Based on past experience, that I knew that it ought to improve at least a bit with action and neck adjustments- the B string was at least 3.5mm off the deck at the 12th, there's a little too much bow in the neck, and the pickup adjustments were odd- closer to the B string than to the G!

I decided to soften those sharp edges on the neck and get rid of the sandpaper feel before I started finalizing the setup, though.

I pulled the neck, removed the tuners, and used 400-grit wet/dry sandpaper to soften all the edges. I started with a fine grit because I didn’t want to have to rub out a lot of sanding scratches. Also, I wasn’t aiming to remove a lot of material or re-shape the neck, just give it a head start on a softer, played-in feel.

Sorry for repeating myself, but the quality of the CNC work on the neck was very impressive. I’ve never seen a Squier this good, even the CV series.

The only place I saw any signs of chatter or tool marks, was on the radiused corners of the heel. Even there, it wasn't much work to clean up.

I reshaped the nut while I was at it, ramping and widening the exit from the back of each nut slot and rounding the corners to feel better where my thumb and fingers touch it. I also softened the edges of the fingerboard and fret ends. In this photo, I hadn't touched the B string slot yet:

Next, I hit the back of the neck and headstock, as well as the nut, fingerboard and frets with 600, 1200 and 2000 grit sandpaper. Just a few strokes at each grit, and mostly looking to burnish everything to a soft luster. Thanks to lack of tool marks and the absence of a heavy gloss polyester coat, the paper didn’t load up as I sanded- it only took a small rectangle about 1” x 2” of each grit to treat the whole neck.

When it was all done, I could see the bright white of raw maple on the corners where I’d rubbed through the sanding sealer. I used my new favourite touch-up; Watco Tung Oil one-step. I’m sure there’s precious little polymerized Tung oil in it, but chemical trickery gives it similar properties- thick enough to not soak in too far, fairly quick drying times, hardens well, and it offers excellent resistance to stains and moisture.

I hung the neck from a light fixture and let it soak for about 15 minutes before wiping off the extra oil.

About 4 hours later, I burnished it forcefully with a microfiber cloth, and it brought up the grain and flecking in the maple nicely.

Although the fingerboard didn't look “thirsty” when new, the oil and burnishing did make it look a little nicer. More importantly, it’s well-sealed against sweat and dead skin cells, and should be easier to clean in future.

 

[Bassiclees]

I have the same 5'r and love it. Only mod I did was a knob change. Neck wood took to oil nicely as you mentioned.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

As I mentioned, the neck pocket was perfectly cut- almost a friction fit.

Can you imagine checking out a thick line of glue in the neck joint on a Les Paul, and having the salesman say “well, it’s thinner than a business card!”

Why did we ever let Fender convince us that was a good yardstick?

Still, I wasn’t satisfied with the way the neck seated in the pocket.

Like a lot of cheap Asian instruments these days, there's caked on polishing compound in every nook and cranny, and sure enough, there was a bunch of it crusted in place in the pocket.

I practically had to chisel at it to clean out the bottom and corners of the pocket.

Here is just some of the evidence:

With that removed, it actually changed the neck angle a bit!

Anyway, here's the finished job, with the oiled and burnished neck in place:

 

[steve_rolfeca]

After restringing, the burnished neck has that "soft" feel that I expect from more expensive instruments. It feels as though the purchase price jumped at least $500, and it's much more in line with the excellent CNC work.

Visually, the Mikro is still toylike, but way the grain pops on the neck now, distracts the eye from it:

The fingerboard looks pretty tasty, too:

I was careful not to sand the serial number markings off. The way they're sheltered by the tuners, your fingers never touch that area anyway.

On second thought, I might get out the 400 (or 320 if necessary) to get rid of the CE markings up top. They're a bit of a eyesore anyway, and it shouldn't be much work to remove them...

The truss rod door is a cool idea, and the cavity looks a lot nicer with all the polishing compound removed.

Ironically, I still had to remove the plate in order to get the full sweep of the Allen wrench while I was adjusting the relief:

The tuners were fine out of the box, but they feel better after tweaking the adjustment screws in the knobs a little.

Combined with smoothing the nut, tuning is perfectly stable and pop-free now.

 

[Riff Ranger]

Nice! I need one like a hole in the head, but I would like to at least play one of these for myself, based on how much I love my 4-string MiKro and Ibanez instruments generally.

As you’ve likely already read and/or surmised, the MiKros can’t take just any short scale strings. Dunlops fit perfectly though, and I expect to stick with them for mine.

Have fun with that thing!

 

[Riff Ranger]

Mine definitely has a thirsty board, and I think it’s Indian laurel rather than jatoba in my case. My RGB305 has a jatoba board and I like it just as much as any rosewood.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

There is shielding paint in the control cavity, but the coat is very thin. I’ll do a proper grounded shielding job w/copper tape when I have the time.

There’s a lot of excess wire in the cavity, but once again, it’s pretty tidy for an instrument at this price point. The white schmoo on the pots and the cavity wall behind them is Lube-A-Trol. I always fill cheap pots with it, because it forms a good barrier coating to keep sweat, dirt, etc., away from the resistance tracks and makes the pots feel smoother.

IME, pre-treatment with a good tuner cleaner/lubricant can give you a good 3 or more years of service life before you’ll be forced to replace the stock pots. As long as the resistance values are within reason, I see no point in throwing away perfectly good potentiometers:

In this case, the bridge volume pot felt a little rough, but it was just because the knob had been pushed down too far on the shaft, and it was rubbing. No tools needed- just a gentle tub on the knob to free it up…

The cavity cover opening also showed visible signs of the dreaded caked on-polishing compound. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little elbow grease and a black sharpie:

The neck screw holes have proper metal ferrules. Unlike the cavity opening, the bottom of the holes were very rough, suggesting that the drill bit used that day was on its last legs. Once again, a little cleanup and a black sharpie made short work of tidying up that area:

 

[steve_rolfeca]

During the intonation and pickup adjustments, it became obvious that the nut was cut too high.

With that taken care of, it plays like butter, and it's buzz-free the full length of the fingerboard with the string height at 2 mm on the treble side, and about 2.75 mm on the bass side.

The pickups and the B string sound a lot better after adjustment.

IMO, the bright, almost sharp-sounding pickups are a good match to the extremely short scale. With the tone wide open, it has a bit of active Jazz bass to it, but always undergirded with the typical warmth of a short scale bass.

With the tone rolled back about 50%, it gets into typical swampy short-scale territory, with the nickel rounds giving it a nice midrange growl- no more finger noise, but a nice Grrrr in the middle of the note.

Getting to know it better over the last couple of days has helped as well. Like my little Guild Jumbo Junior acoustic (23.75" !!!!), you have to adjust your plucking attack to get the best out of low-tension strings.

Plucked gently, the B string sounds more focused and solid now.

It's still no Dingwall, but at least I realize that the people who posted positive reviews on Sweetwater about the tight-sounding B string weren't completely out of their minds.

I've got a set of the coated Ibanez strings on the way, and they're supposed to be a lot better than the ones that come on the bass.

We'll have to see, but at least for now I'm going to keep it tuned B to G. Me likey!

Total cost for mods to date:

• 75 cents worth of ultra-fine sandpaper.
• 25 cents for Watco oil.
• Maybe 5 cents worth of Lube-A-trol

If I'm able to cure the electrical interference with a couple of bucks worth of copper tape and solder and without a pickup swap, this will have been an extremely inexpensive makeover.

I spent more on strings while sorting out my headless EBH1005SMS than it cost me to purchase this entire bass, including the gig bag. I don't want to even talk about the amount of time and parts I put into my Hofner Ignition Club just to make it play properly.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

One last thought for now:

I don't know what the older models were like, but with the current GSRM25 obviously being put together in one of Cortec's better Indonesian CNC plants, this is a pretty sweet deal as a modding platform.

All of the tweaks and adjustments I put into this fell within what I consider a normal, thorough setup and sweetening.

More importantly, none of the tasks were of the aggravating, hard to perform kind, and I didn't have to spend extra just to replace junk, nonperforming parts.

Compare this to some what I had to deal with as I delved into my most recent Chinese-made projects.

I still cringe when I look at photos of the tuner alignment on the Hofner, and ended up binning the tuners altogether because they were so stiff and crotchety. I also had to put about $40 with postage into a zero-fret nut in order to get the open strings to ring out properly:

Then there was my Epiphone Casino Coupe. Sweet-playing, great sounding guitar once it was set up, but the pegholes for the tuners looked like they were cut with a butter knife. Also, in this day and age you shouldn't have to buy a replacement bridge and posts to make an instrument intonate properly, or have 3 of the stock tuners replaced under warranty because the baseplates were warped.

Believe it or not, this was the good side:

 

[JRA]

well, @steve_rolfeca, your mods/fixes/upgrades/setups have been fun to read and as thorough as that little guy deserves! and extra credit for minimum budget and maximum results! great job throughout! congratulations on your new instrument!

 

[coy garcia]

Nice work!! I love taking a cheapy and turning it into a real player

 

[-Stingray]

Love it! Nice job! I have an old Micro sitting in a case somewhere that I’m going to have to pull out.

 

[Riff Ranger]

Love it! Nice job! I have an old Micro sitting in a case somewhere that I’m going to have to pull out.

Do it! They’re ridiculously good.

 

[lucas303]

I currently have my 5 string Mikro tuned up an octave (starting at B1 instead of B0). I've done a ton of experimenting with this thing and it never stops being fun to play (and shockingly good for the price). Enjoy!

 

[superheavyfunk]

Fantastic thread! I leaned a lot about ways to sweeten up an instrument and enjoyed the journey. Kinda makes me want to get one too!

 

[Deleted member 271037]

If a modern CNC machine is programmed correctly there's no reason why a cheap guitar shouldn't have perfectly aligned parts and a tight neck pocket. It doesn't matter if the CNC machine is located in the USA or Indonesia. The result should be PERFECT if things are done properly.

I have long suspected that what Fender is doing with some of their Squier models must be a deliberate choice to make them less attractive than their more expensive Fenders instruments. In this day and age there's no reason why Squiers should come with huge gaps in the neck pocket and misaligned necks with the strings almost hanging outside the fretboard on one side of the neck (and no, it's not just a matter of loosening the neck screws and re-aligning the neck, although it may help a little bit in some cases).

But then again, it's not just Squiers. The Fender American Ultra Vs have the G-string hanging almost outside the fretboard and the truss rod in the American Original P-basses isn't properly centered inside the neck (at least this was the case on early batches). Someone at Fender must be really bad at programming CNC machines. It really shouldn't be possible to deliver such poor quality with the technology available today.

As for what you mentioned about the B+E strings being unnaturally loud, that's a very common problem with J-bass pickups and soapbars unless they have staggered pole pieces to compensate for the fretboard radius. There are really just two ways to fix this, either get pickups with staggered pole pieces or raise the B+E at the saddles until you get a better volume balance. Raising the saddles too much can make your intonation problems worse of course, as you would be "bending" the strings a bit more when fretting them. Make sure your nut slots are as low as possible without getting fret buzz from the open strings. It's hard to tell from the pics but it looks to me like the nut slots are WAY too high? They usually are on new basses in this price range. Lower nut slots means you will "bend" the strings less when fretting them which may help a little bit with the intonation. Also, make sure you set the intonation using the OPEN string + 12th fret. The 12th fret harmonic is not always reliable, especially on a scale as short as this.

You mentioned that the pots and the jack socket feel cheap. Are the pots typical guitar values? A or B taper, 250/500k? I ask because I've often seen unusual pot values (and wiring) in entry level Ibanez passive basses. I don't remember the resistance values but I know they were pretty far off the standard 250/500k we typically see in basses/guitars. I've also seen "D" taper pots in cheap Ibanez basses, which is something I can't remember ever seeing in other guitars. I believe "D" taper is a more extreme version of "A" (audio/logarithmic) taper (not sure about this though...?). Anyway, my point is, if the stock pots' resistance values are way off the typical 250/500k it might affect the tone a bit if you replace the stock pots with standard guitar 250/500k pots. I would like to think that Ibanez have used the unusual pot values I've seen for a reason... but in this price range I'm not so sure.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

…or raise the B+E at the saddles until you get a better volume balance.

…It's hard to tell from the pics but it looks to me like the nut slots are WAY too high?

…Are the pots typical guitar values? A or B taper, 250/500k?

…Anyway, my point is, …it might affect the tone a bit if you replace the stock pots with standard guitar 250/500k pots.

In this case, the fingerboard radius is pretty flat, which helped. I was able to get a good string-to-string volume balance just by lowering the bass side of the pickups a little.

Good eye re: the nut slots. At that point in the proceedings, I hadn’t started to correct the height of the nut slots yet.

As I said toward the end of my notes, it now plays like butter, and the intonation is much better.

I haven’t put a meter on the pots yet. That will happen when I pull the pots in preparation for shielding the control cavity.

However, judging by the anount of treble and how progressive the tone and volume are, it seems reasonable to assume that the resistance values and tapers are reasonably correct.

After lubing them with a Cramolin equivalent and adjusting the knobs so they don’t rub on the body or the bushings in the pots, the feel of the controls is now quite smooth.

Replacement is probably the only cure for the Jack, but I’ll have to figure out an arrangement that works with the tightly radiused edges of the Mikro’s body.