Stingray 5 Action Issues

Hey all, new poster, but long time player and I’ve done tons of work on different basses, but this is my first Music Man and I’m finding it to be very difficult to get it set up properly.

I’ve got the saddles dropped completely to the deck, and the string height was still around 9/64 at the 12th fret on the low B. I took the neck off and found the factory brown shim installed (why is MM using shims instead of properly fitting necks?), so I removed it and installed a much thicker card shim which seemed to only net me 1/64 improvement. I tried tightening the truss rod, which got me another half a 64th before it started buzzing unacceptably.

Some other odd things I’m finding are the intonation screws on a couple of the saddles need to be so far out that they are only about halfway into the saddles. They are very close to coming out completely. I also find the neck doesn’t sit particularly tight in the pocket. Like, I can wiggle the neck about 1-5 degrees easily when the screws are out. I can probably fit a business card between the neck and pocket on all sides. For a bass with this high of a price tag, and this good of a reputation, I’m fairly disappointed with the fit of these parts.

And as I mentioned, I am not a total noob at this. I’ve got about 6 basses that all sit at 4/64 perfectly with no buzz and plenty of adjustment available on both saddle and intonation screws.

What’s really strange is the bass was second hand, but it appears to be in immaculate condition. Like it looks like it was never taken out of the case. The gold hardware doesn’t even have any finish wear. Maybe it was never played because of how impossible it was to set up?

Is there some hidden secret to setting up a MM SR5? Or do I just have an oddity here? Thanks.