Floyd Rose

Well just acquired my 6th guitar and my first Floyd rose with a
locking nut.
My list now goes like

Valencia nylon
Martinez steel string 3/4
Yamaha FG340
Epi Les Paul 100
Red Washburn MG340 (latest)
soon to come a Yamaha Pacifica 112

Boy is it a pia to adjust the FR bridge. I bought the Washburn used
and needed a bit of work to get it up to scratch. First up when I
plugged it in, there was nothing coming out of the speakers. Ripped of
the back plate and shorted the volume pot effectively bypassing it,
and lo and behlod there was sound.
Rushed down to the local Tandy store and bought a 220k log pot and
soldered it in. And there was sound.
Next, first five frets had pitted marks so I thought a fret redress
was the order. Never done one before, so did the wise thing and
dropped it off to a luthier . Three days later I picked it up and I
was stoked. Frets had been polished and recrowned, the H-S-H pickups
had been straightened and raised, the bridge had been cleaned and the
fretboard oiled. All this for $80. Good value I thought.

Now this is were the fun begins. When I plugged it back in again there
was a bit of buzz on the bass strings from the 7th frets and up. So
maybe a truss rod adjustment was in order. I'll like giving my power
chords a bit of a wack now and again and so I could detect a faintest
yet noticable ringing buzz. No probs out comes the allen key.
Discoverd the truss nut to be fully wound out - anticlockwise - so
were at maximum relief... hmmm not good. I was thinking I might need
the neck reset ( bolt on unit).
But then I noticed the bridge was dipped all the way into the guitar
body effectively sitting lower than the nut. Might need adjusting I
says.

Googled it and went to the the Floyd Rose site to read up on my next
task. Floating bridges are a great concept, some guitarists love 'em
some hate 'em. The haters normally end up fixing the bridge solid.
I'm undecided. I wanna play it first before the verdict comes out.

Now the adjustment of the FR bridge or first phase of tuning, involves
adjusting the bridge anchor screws, tuning using the machine heads
until the bridge sits parallel with the body. Took me an hour to get
to this stage.

Next, intonation. This involved adjusting the individual saddle pieces
back or forth until 12th fret harmonic matched 12th Fret played.
Not a big job but took me another 1 hour there aswell.

With everyting done, locked down the nut, and fine tuned using the
top adjusters. Phew that was it, 3 and a bit hours and my guitar is
ready.
Plugged it in, and was amazed at the playibility. This is one fast
neck and the sound is absolutely awesome. Bending strings is a breeze
and the guitar stays in tune. Hadnt elimanated the buzz totally from
the 6th string but cant hear it when I'm playing.
Absolutely love it.

Now I cant wait to trying different grade strings to do this over
again.


vifer





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