Action re-adjustment - 25TH Swamp Ash Special.

steveyraff

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Joined
Jan 17, 2013
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IRELAND
Hey guys,

So I've had my PRS for over a year or so now. Its a 25th anni Swamp Ash Special, Narrowfield.

I had a few teething problems with this in the early days. I basically had to set it up from scratch. I hear the PRS factory set up is supposed to be very good, but somewhere along the way mine was obviously tampered with. I bought it new from a UK music store where it had been on display. The first thing I noticed was that it was fitted with a set of 9's. I emailed both PRS and the music store. PRS said it was definitely shipped with 10's fitted, and the music store maintained they didn't change that. I put 10's on and low and behold, it was ALL OVER THE PLACE. So someone re-set it for 9's and I had to do a new set up on it.

I think I done a pretty good job - I took my time and tweaked it until I was happy. For whatever reason, after a year of solid weekly gigging, daily playing, at my last gig I noticed for the first time, some notes choking. The neck appears to be still straight to me. Not sure whats happened. All I know is, I probably need to raise the action slightly. I like my action as low as possible. But something seems to have moved slightly so now its buzzing a lot and choking in areas.

What is the best way to go about this?

When I set it up, I had to adjust the six leading edge screws, which I know you aren't supposed to touch unless you have to, well I had to. I am wondering, can I just raise individual saddles? I noticed there are very tiny allen key screws at each corner of each saddle. I read up on the PRS website about the bridges but it does not make mention to these adjustments.

I am also thinking the neck just might, very, very slightly be arcing (towards me while holding).

Advice welcome,

Steve.
Kick The Bucket Blues Band, Ireland.
http://www.youtube.com/kickthebucketband
 
If you want to do it yourself, your first stop should be here: setup

If it was me, I'd set it to factory specs and then play with the action if I wanted it a bit different...
 
If you want to do it yourself, your first stop should be here: setup

If it was me, I'd set it to factory specs and then play with the action if I wanted it a bit different...


Yep, that was my first stop. It still didn't answer the question from my original post as to how to go about correctly re-adjusting individual saddle heights. I presume it is the allen key screws I mentioned though.

Thanks.
 
The saddles should follow the same radius as your fretboard. You are going to have to measure string heights for every string using the high and low strings as guides and extrapolating for the middle strings.

And, yes, those allen screws on the saddles can do that. Just make sure that they start in the same radius as our fretboard. If you need to raise one saddle much more than it's neighbors, you have more serious problems like uneven frets.

edit: it sounds like your truss rod may be a hair tight if the neck is doing the limbo...
 
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The saddles should follow the same radius as your fretboard. You are going to have to measure string heights for every string using the high and low strings as guides and extrapolating for the middle strings.

And, yes, those allen screws on the saddles can do that. Just make sure that they start in the same radius as our fretboard. If you need to raise one saddle much more than it's neighbors, you have more serious problems like uneven frets.

edit: it sounds like your truss rod may be a hair tight if the neck is doing the limbo...

Great, thank you - just the info I required. Cheers.
 
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