GuitarAddict
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2018
- Messages
- 129
Quick share on my experience of the difference in tone due to bridge set up.
My two silver sky guitars came set up differently from the factory due to slight differences in neck to body angle. (Rather than spend time getting the neck joint angle exact to allow what I would consider a superior bridge set up PRS seem to adjust things at the bridge during set up to compensate.)
One was set up with the bridge completely decked out on the body. The other the bridge was jacked up by about 1mm so only the rear was touching, and the block viewed from the rear of the guitar where the strings pass through was at an angle meaning the springs were exerting less tension on it. This guitar had perceptibly less bass and a very annoying harsh overtone on higher notes that prompted me to change pickups which only partially fixed this. I tuned it down the other day to E flat and the tone improved a lot, leading me to believe that with the extra spring tension on the bridge pulling the bridge down onto the body detuning would cause, had improved the tone.
It was impossible to drop the bridge down onto the body as the saddles would then be too low to achieve proper string height so I began searching for longer saddle screws, which I found, but didn’t fit the PRS saddles, so I resorted to swapping the saddles out completely for some slightly taller aftermarket ones that required minimal modification to fit the ‘rails’ that the saddle screws fit in. Anyway, all set up with these new saddles allowed the bridge to be completely decked out as, in my opinion, it should have been delivered from the factory, and the tone is now better than my first silver sky which by the way is noticeable heavier and why it wasn’t my main guitar.
The difference in sound I am convinced is due to the difference in bridge set up rather than change in saddles.
Paul’s take on this subject is that either set up works try both and see shat you prefer. Be interesting to hear which his favourite is and why he doesn’t choose to have all ss guitars leaving his factory set up to his preference rather than doing the easy fix with bridge adjustment.
The difference is night and day in terms of tone.
My two silver sky guitars came set up differently from the factory due to slight differences in neck to body angle. (Rather than spend time getting the neck joint angle exact to allow what I would consider a superior bridge set up PRS seem to adjust things at the bridge during set up to compensate.)
One was set up with the bridge completely decked out on the body. The other the bridge was jacked up by about 1mm so only the rear was touching, and the block viewed from the rear of the guitar where the strings pass through was at an angle meaning the springs were exerting less tension on it. This guitar had perceptibly less bass and a very annoying harsh overtone on higher notes that prompted me to change pickups which only partially fixed this. I tuned it down the other day to E flat and the tone improved a lot, leading me to believe that with the extra spring tension on the bridge pulling the bridge down onto the body detuning would cause, had improved the tone.
It was impossible to drop the bridge down onto the body as the saddles would then be too low to achieve proper string height so I began searching for longer saddle screws, which I found, but didn’t fit the PRS saddles, so I resorted to swapping the saddles out completely for some slightly taller aftermarket ones that required minimal modification to fit the ‘rails’ that the saddle screws fit in. Anyway, all set up with these new saddles allowed the bridge to be completely decked out as, in my opinion, it should have been delivered from the factory, and the tone is now better than my first silver sky which by the way is noticeable heavier and why it wasn’t my main guitar.
The difference in sound I am convinced is due to the difference in bridge set up rather than change in saddles.
Paul’s take on this subject is that either set up works try both and see shat you prefer. Be interesting to hear which his favourite is and why he doesn’t choose to have all ss guitars leaving his factory set up to his preference rather than doing the easy fix with bridge adjustment.
The difference is night and day in terms of tone.
