PRS Vela - neck pickup dropping

MattV

New Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2016
Messages
9
I recently bought a new Vela from Sweetwater. Amazing guitar but during my first couple gigs playing with it, the bass side of the neck pickup gradually starts dropping down and i have to move it back up after each set. It is damn near flush with the pickgaurd after playing a 45 minutes set. I'm guessing the vibrations of playing is making the screw wiggle it down? I haven't had a chance to look under the pickgaurd yet to see if anything obvious is going on. Thinking (hoping) that i may need to just replace the pickup height spring?... Has anyone heard of this or ran into this issue?
 
Last edited:
pull the strings and pick guard to look. maybe it's missing the spring on that screw...???


Yea that's what Im going to check hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Hoping it is that simple of a solution... Ill let you know what i see when i do. It holds tight when i set the correct height and does not move at all when i push on the pickup it once its set. It just slowly lowers while playing in normal gigging conditions. A shame I have to already pull the pickgaurd off and all on a brand new guitar...
 
So i opened everything up yesterday and there was a spring there. So I took a spring from a humbucker i had in another guitar and swapped it out. This spring was a little thicker than the PRS one and I cut it slightly longer hoping it would give it more tension. I guess ill find out if it holds at my next gig tomorrow.
 
So had a gig this weekend and was able to try it with the new spring. It seemed to hold longer than the previous but the pickup did start dropping a bit by the end of the night..... Any thoughts? Would i have better luck using surgical tubing? It is still under warranty but it sounds like it would be a huge hassle to ship this thing back to sweetwater for this issue, and who knows when i would get it back.
 
i saw you post in the other thread. I think the op in that one settled on glue. But since you have an S2 from sweetwater, I would contact them for help.
 
i sent PRS Customer Service an email. Thank you all for the replies. We will see what they say..
 
With the pickup out, get it adjusted to the height you want, turn it over and put a dab of blue Loctite where the threads meet the flange of the pickup.

http://www.loctiteproducts.com/p/10/15/t_lkr_blue/overview/Loctite-Threadlocker-Blue-242.htm

Thanks for the reply. PRS customer support thinks that the screws are the wrong size and are sending me new ones. I would be surprised that is the case cause the ones on there hold strong and i can even push on the pickup without movement if im just playing at home. Its just when standing and playing in a gig situation they move down. I guess they can slightly be off spec when they were manufactured, i dunno. If that doesn't fix and trying higher tension springs then i guess i will go the loctite route. Thanks again for all the suggestions!
 
Back
Top