Can't get my guitar to behave

[blues guru]

hello everyone been trying to set up my McCarty 594 and I'm running into problems. Changed the nut to bone and if I want everything to intonate ate the first fret I have to lower the action on all the strings to the point where my high e would buzz. It won't stop buzzing no matter how much I raise the action from the bridge or increase the relief in the neck. The action at the first fret as I set it now is .58-.48 from the low e to the high e., which is 0.02mm lower then the highest setting according to PRS spec sheet. Bummed out if I don't get this fixed I would not be able to send it to a PRS Tech center for about a whole year or I'll just forget about playing all together as this is the only guitar I own. I would appreciate any suggestions or help anyone can give me. Thanks in advance

 

[Lewguitar]

My suggestion is to bite the bullet and take it to the best guitar repair person in your area, preferably someone who builds guitars, and get it done right.

 

[bodia]

My suggestion is to bite the bullet and take it to the best guitar repair person in your area, preferably someone who builds guitars, and get it done right.

Agreed

 

[RickP]

Yes, if it was playing properly before and is now buzzing with the new nut, it’s apparent that the new nut slot is cut too deep. Unfortunately, you can’t really adjust that out. You could try a second replacement nut, or reinstall the original one until you can have a competent luthier install one for you.

The 594s play great with the standard nut, and sound great with them as well, so you’re not losing anything (and apparently gaining a lot) to dump the bone nut and enjoy the stock setup. Best of luck!

 

[blues guru]

Out the box it'll be way to difficult to play anything at the first fret at least mine was that way; and the high e ate through that stock nut within a couple of months of me buying it. The nut is fine I had the neck dead straight when I cut the nut, if anything its a bit shallower then it needs to be. the action on the first fret can only go up as I start adding relief; the guitar is set up with .12 mm of relief right now and 1.6 or 1.7 mm is the action at the twelfth fret. I took the action all the way up to 2mm at the twelfth fret, buzz won't go away and off course the intonation was out.

 

[blues guru]

My suggestion is to bite the bullet and take it to the best guitar repair person in your area, preferably someone who builds guitars, and get it done right.

there arnt any good luthiers around, closest one is a couple of boarders across and is a PRS dealer he did ok work and the guitar still had the same issue when he gave it back to me. Thought is was the frets but he checked the frets right in front of me and they were dead straight didnt need any work. Spent the same amount of money it would cost to get a core McCarty 594 just to get this one to work lol; and it still didn't. All in including all the tools I had to buy I could have probably gotten my self a private stock. which would have been something to tick of my bucket list.

 

[blues guru]

The more I think of it the more I'm convinced that I probably bought the only dud PRS made that year. I had the same issue with it brand new it won't intonate and the action was too high all over; and if I tried to lower it, it would buzz. The strings felt too loose and the neck would bend when ever I bent a string and I would literally feel it wobble when I played not vibrate but it would literally wobble. So ever since I thought a setup would fix all of that but here I am three years later and god only knows how much money I spent trying to get it to play and sound right but it was all for nothing. I could have learned so much and gotten better at playing had I spent the time practicing and studying. I am truly disappointed with my self and my luck I could say with PRS too but I love them way too much and mistakes do happen as awesome as they are at what they do. Lets see got 8 years before I'm 50 maybe I can save up for another PRS before the arthritis eats away my hands. Funny thing three years ago I thought I bought myself the best birthday gift ever.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply to me

 

[Rider1260]

The stock nut on a 594 is bone I believe , That said I HATE bone guitar nuts they can vari a ton from one piece to the next and its super easy to miscut them and then they buzz or sound dead. , IF it was me I would put a Stock PRS nut from a Pattern neck
( 1 11/16 width ) it sure improved my Fiore and works perfectly on every PRS I own

 

[Rider1260]

Can we get a picture of this guitar ??? there are videos of Paul jumping on PRS neck and a Pattern Vintage is the thickest neck PRS makes and to hear someone say it wobbles is crazy , I have NEVER had any guitar I could not intonate , not doubting your ability but I gotta see what's up.

 

[blues guru]

The stock nut on a 594 is bone I believe , That said I HATE bone guitar nuts they can vari a ton from one piece to the next and its super easy to miscut them and then they buzz or sound dead. , IF it was me I would put a Stock PRS nut from a Pattern neck
( 1 11/16 width ) it sure improved my Fiore and works perfectly on every PRS I own

It's an S2 so they don't come with bone nuts and bone makes a huge difference to tone and sustain; and any nut that is not cut properly will make the string sound dead or buzzy regardless of the material.

 

[Veetwin]

Throw the bone nut away. My 2 cents worth.

 

[blues guru]

Can we get a picture of this guitar ??? there are videos of Paul jumping on PRS neck and a Pattern Vintage is the thickest neck PRS makes and to hear someone say it wobbles is crazy , I have NEVER had any guitar I could not intonate , not doubting your ability but I gotta see what's up.

you won't see it on a video but neck feels like its made out of rubber if I move it will wobble I can feel it and it sounds like someone is leaning on a tremolo arm. As for the intonation if you loosen the truss rod to raise the action and to get rid of the buzz the bridge dosen't have enough space to move the saddels and get the guitar to intonate and the guitar will still buzz. If you go the other way you have to raise the action so high the guitar will still not intonate and it will still buzz. Tightening the truss rod will solve the neck wobbling but the guitar will still buzz. After a while found out that my bridge was bent got a new one but still same issues. Not sure how to upload an image but its a 2020 S2 its on my profile picture

 

[blues guru]

I would like to clarify that one guitar dose not mean that PRS Guitars are all bad I'm not saying that at all. Im a huge PRS fan I've been playing for almost 10 years and I've played a guitar that wasn't a PRS for about three months and gave that guitar away and bought my first PRS an se custom 24 since then I have played nothing but PRS and I won't play anything els that's how much I love the guitars and the company.

 

[aphantomvaper]

If the intonation is off at the first fret no amount of adjustment at the bridge will help. The bridge adjusts intonation after the 12th fret.

The issue is at the nut. You may try buying a Core nut set off the PRS Accessories site and install. It may be too high at first but should make a good starting point for refined adjustment.

My $.02 good luck I really liked the S2 594!!

 

[Lewguitar]

Does the OP have a set of nut files?

That's a must.

 

[blues guru]

If the intonation is off at the first fret no amount of adjustment at the bridge will help. The bridge adjusts intonation after the 12th fret.

The issue is at the nut. You may try buying a Core nut set off the PRS Accessories site and install. It may be too high at first but should make a good starting point for refined adjustment.

My $.02 good luck I really liked the S2 594!!

That's not entirely correct it will not by much but it will affect the intonation at the first fret in fact it will affect the intonation on all the frets not just the 12th fret. My current action at the first fret is within factory spec the one other thing is the shape of the slot and I have no problems with any other string but the high e string its buzzing no matter what I do. Visually I look at the slot and it's a perfect u shape and the edge of that slot is the highest point in the slot so not sure what's going on. Thing is whether I raise the action at the nut or the bridge that string is buzzing. It could be the slot but like I said I have zero issues with any of the other slots I've cut about 10 nuts for it so far and I keep running into the same issue. By now I know exactly what I'm doing mind you each on of these nuts would take me at least 6-8 hours to cut properly and that's with out me trimming the edges and making it look pretty and then you'll have to spend time and play around with the set up adjust the action and make sure the intonation is not off. I'm going that slow and I'm really careful about what I'm doing and I have put in so much time and effort. What ever I do I can't get rid of that buzz and I've had three techs of varying degrees of skill work on it they couldn't make it work either one of them was at an actual PRS dealer and another one is an actually luthier he builds custom guitars. Trust me I doubted them long before I started doubting my guitar. You might say Its ok it's just a little bit of buzz, you'd say that until you go play in public and you can see the audience and the people you play with squint every time you play something on that string had a guy who's a far far more capable player then most people I know play my guitar for a couple of songs by the time he was done he was asking me if this was a Chinese made PRS and that's before I decided to work on it my self.

 

[soundperf]

In a purely guitar setup methodology, the trussrod is not meant to set action. It’s purely to set the straightness of the neck. Usually to create some relief. Action for everything above the third fret is set at the bridge and for the first three frets is mostly done by a proper height and cut nut. This of course is assuming all the things important prior to this (like fret level and dress) are correct. What is the neck relief at the 8th, 12th fret with no string tension? Other than a totally twisted and/or warped neck (which should be easy to see) a properly adjusted truss rod and installed nut should be able to be set up properly. When I hear the neck is very sensitive to hand pressure I think of a truss rod that’s really out of whack. That’s barring a very thin neck or certain woods. Something PRS is not known for having. I wonder if the neck is twisted or warped and the techs tried to compensate by using the truss rod to compensate beyond its intended purpose.

As you mentioned it’s always possible to have a bad neck even on a PRS. There are still ways to fix this with a proper skilled luthier. It would require going all the back to first fixing any neck twist with heat and clamping, then proper radiused, leveled and dressed frets and then starting over with a new nut.

 

[show_a_little_faith]

Clearly you're unhappy with it and how it feels/sounds. After everything else you've tried hasn't worked, I'd say definitely send it to the PRS Tech center. Let them know exactly and specifically what you see wrong with it. And yes, they might keep it for awhile but at least it should finally be fixed. My two cents, anyway...

 

[blues guru]

you are correct the the way I see it is relief is like fine tuning the action I like my neck to be dead straight if possible if not then with the least amount of relief possible never actually measured relief without string tension. Only way I can think off is to have equal amount of turns on both sides of the truss rod meaning to find its neutral position and see how much relief the neck has without the truss rod pushing it up or down. Currently I have it set to 0.12mm at the 8th fret took it all the way up to 0.3mm it still buzzed and some of my strings will not intonate with that much relief, I like my action below 2mm and above 1.5mm somewhere in between is just perfect for me. Then I was thinking heck lets go for it lets see how high I have to raise the action to get rid of the buzz I had it just over 2mm and the buzz was still there and the guitar was unplayable for me with action like that. Going the other direction and decreasing the relief will only give the string less room to vibrate so I would imagine I will have to raise the action even higher than 2mm. This is driving me insane but the tech at the PRS dealer assured me that the fret work is impeccable on my guitar and that the neck was fine and if I remember correctly he had the relief set at .25mm and the action set a bit lower then I have it setting currently.

 

[blues guru]

Clearly you're unhappy with it and how it feels/sounds. After everything else you've tried hasn't worked, I'd say definitely send it to the PRS Tech center. Let them know exactly and specifically what you see wrong with it. And yes, they might keep it for awhile but at least it should finally be fixed. My two cents, anyway...

seems like its the only option I have. The thing is its gonna cost me the price of a new core model and then I would probably tell them to refinish it and put stainless steel frets on it which is even more money. But yeah seems like it's my only option.