CE-22 setup

[severniae]

New here, but this seems the place to be to talk PRS guitars!

I've got a CE-22 from 2006 that I bought second hand. I'm an amateur but just tried my own set-up on it. Adjusting the neck relief and setting the intonation and action I'm comfortable with, but I seem to have got the tremolo set up completely wrong.

This has also prevented me getting the action to where I want it, as the trem is sitting too high, although I think I've followed the advice on the site and got the bottom of the trem floating 1/16th off the body.... But this means that my action is too high so I'm not really sure how it's meant to be.

Also a lot of pictures seem to show the trem sitting lower than I have mine. Could anyone advise on the correct procedure and measurements (and, more importantly, where to measure from?

Many thanks,

 

[jbird]

I hate to see someone mess with the 6 screws that adjust the trem height, you reall shouldn't have to! Do you have room to lower your saddles?

 

[John Beef]

Agreed, the one thing I will not mess with on my PRS are the trem screws. I also have one saddle all the way down (low E), but my action is pretty sweet.

If you do need to adjust, see John Ingram's PRS setup video. Trem setup starts around 1:50.

 

[severniae]

Right, so I managed to adjust them. and the action is sitting much nicer now.

I'm still unsure as to exactly how low or high the tremolo should sit over the body, but have mine set so that the front of the trem is almost, but not quite touching the body, and the back end is risen to approximately 1/16th - I've set it up so that from the low E string when bent up it goes almost exactly to F# - does this sound correct?

 

[Felix]

Mine was set (by a PRS tech) so that the trem is about a 1/16th of an inch off the guitar body at the fulcrum/screws -actually the distance seems larger to me but not by more than a hair- and the body slowly slopes off from there while the trem "stays level", as it were. Fully bent up, my low E goes to an F. Exactly.

I forgot to mention that the trem is on a CE-22 and the machine is set up for .009 - .042s.