Truss rod adjustment

Robert Tee

New Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2015
Messages
1
My 1986 custom 24 is generally extremely stable.
In recent weeks, however, the action has even getting a little higher. I assume because we are now in winter in the Northeast, with heated house and lower humidity.
Tried to adjust it myself this AM (studio date tomorrow) and am confused by varying result.

I turn the adjustment nut only slightly at a time with strings loosened.
No matter the direction i turn the nut, however, snark tuner shows the strings at higher pitch after a small adjustment either way.
Loosening the neck should lower pitch.
Now I'm not sure what's going on.
I've set up and adjusted my own guitars for decades, and have never seen this behavior before.

Question:

Can someone confirm which direction to turn the nut to raise action and which to lower on a PRS custom 24 of that vintage (probably any PRS would be the same on this)?
Sighting from the headstock toward the body and looking at the truss rod nut, I'm turning counter clockwise to raise action and clockwise to lower.

And as long as I'm posting, how much string buzz on the frets (low E especially) is considered acceptable? Seems raising the low E far enough to eliminate that would raise action overall unacceptably.

Thank you.
Robert
 
Action is set with saddles and in some cases nutheight.What you is talking about is neck relief.what you refer to as lower or raise action is more how soft or hard strings feels.Loosen the neck gives more bow and tightning gives straighter neck.Check PRS setup guide,that's a great start.Im from Sweden and have the same problem every year.Tightning the neck(clockwise) just a quarter turn at most does the trick.Its all about feel really.A good setup is what you feel is a great playing guitar.
 
You don't need to loosen the strings on PRS when adjusting the truss rod. Even on an SE, they are designed to be adjusted with tension. The necks are designed to be pretty straight and there should be no string buzzing, you may have a cracked nut at the low E string making the string too low, check the measurements on the PRS site for first fret measurement and 12th fret measurement
 
Back
Top