New SL2H Day and OFR Radius Question

[norrin radcliff]

Just got my first SL2H today and it rocks over the DK2 that I've been playing.

I've been scouring the board for Floyd Radius posts, hoping to answer my question, but I haven't seen anything that quite fits my situation - so here goes:

Installed a 32mm Big Block (yes, I could notice a difference in the tone), along with a brass tremstopper, silent springs, and brass claw.

Adjusted the neck, installed D'addario 10-46's, setup action, and reintonated the bridge. When I intonated the bridge, I noticed that there were no shims under the saddles.

What I ended up with - the guitar plays well by normal standards, but I've noticed that the bass side of the trem is sunken lower into the body more than the treble side, which is essentially flush with the body. This seemed really odd to me, so I confirmed that the saddles were in the correct positions, and everything was cool.

I'm thinking that the bridge plate/post "levelness" issue is a result of the saddles needing to be radiused appropriately. Once it is, I'm thinking it will level out. Also the action on the bass side is good, BG are high, and treble is a little high.

Any thoughts?

[DonP]

If it plays well by normal standards, then just play the thing and stop looking at it with a magnifying glass looking for issues.

[wilkinsi]

Yeah, be grateful. Not everyone owns an SL2H

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

Shimming the Floyd flatter will sink the tremolo even deeper into the recess.

There is some variance in the fretboard thickness and fret height that will result in a little unevenness, plus depending on whether you bias the bass side a little higher (I like about 1.4 mm on the bass side and 1 - 1.2 mm on the treble side @ the 17th fret) they may not come out to exactly the same height.

Even considering a .2 - .4 mm bias toward the bass side sometimes the bass side is a little lower relative to the body than the treble side, sometimes it's a bit higher, and sometimes they're dead even. It just depends.

[ulijdavid]

Floyd bridges are designed for the traditional fretboard radii. The nuts I believe are set for 14" radius. Jackson removes the shims in the bridge because of the compound radius fretboard 12"-16". By removing the shims, the bridge radius is more close to the 16" fretboard radius.
Also, check to see if the bridge saddles were re-assembled correctly. The high and low E saddles are one height (lowest), the A and B saddles are the mid heights, and the D and G saddles are the highest. Make sure they are assemlbed correctly. If the order is messed up, your string heights will be all out of whack.

[norrin radcliff]

Thanks for the advice. I played my first gig with the guitar last night, and it played pretty well. It sounded great, but I still need to tweak the truss rod and play with the bridge a bit.

I'm not sure if the board radius, or fret level are out of whack or what. I ended up putting 4 allparts shims under the high E and 4 under the B, as well. That gave me about 3/64" action measured at the 9th, 12th, and 24th frets (measured across each string), with the bridge sunken into body equally at both posts. When I had got it originally and tried to set it up for my magical "3/64" action, I had the bass side of the trem sunk into the body about 1/4" with the treble side flush with the body. I've never owned a guitar that needed to be set up this way, if anything the bass side was slightly higher, but I almost always have been able to run both bridge posts sunken equally.

Everything leans towards the saddles being out of whack, but I just don't see it. Unshimmed, the radius on the saddles is pretty clear and they look to be in the proper order, although with the posts level the action across the G, B, E was not consistent (maybe 1/64 lower on the B, than on the E and G). I have no idea why I had to shim just the treble side of the trem to get it sorted out...I'm going to keep playing with it and see if its something obvious that I'm missing. Is the tolerance on OFRs this sketchy nowadays? I've been playing LoPro and Original Edges for the last 7 years, and never had to mess with anything like this.

The only other thing I've done is remove a thin shim from the bass side of the nut. The low E had planty of clearance, and didn't need it, so I'm not sure why it was even there in the first place...

[vklobucar]

Are we sure that the Floyd saddles are reinstalled in the proper order? that is from left to right (or right to left if you like) 2, 1, 0 ,0, 1, 2,

Could be that the saddles were incorrectly installed at some point no?

[norrin radcliff]

That's what I thought too, but it just doesn't look like it. We don't have a gig on the calendar for the next 2 weeks, so I'll tear into it again at some point this week.

[Chad]

I'd probably pull the Floyd, pull the saddles, and make sure they were installed correctly. If that's fine, then I'd measure each saddle with dial calipers. The E/e, A/B, and D/G saddles should measure the same. If they do, then I'd caliper the baseplate and measure various points across the width. If that's all in check, then something is up with the guitar. Highly doubtful, but maybe the trem rout was cut unevenly or something else whacky.

BTW, when shimming I first set the low E and high E to the same action height (even if that's not what you want). Then I shim so the action is equal across all 6 strings. THEN set it to the action setting you want.

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

I don't even think I could get my Floyd recessed 1/4" if I tried, but that seems pretty ridiculous to have 1/4" difference, so I'm going to say that's some kind of exaggeration on your part, or perhaps you meant 1/8"... And even then, that seems ridiculous. The differences I'm talking about are more like .5 mm or less, maybe 1 mm on the extreme end of tolerance? :think:

Anyway, the Floyd nut is 10" and the bridge end is about a 15" radius and won't match the radius of the fretboard exactly and the action will vary down the fretboard. It is a compound radius fretboard and gets flatter toward the high frets, so the action won't be perfectly consistent on every string/fret unless the nut is 12" and the bridge is about 18" - the bridge has to be flatter than the flattest radius of the neck (16") by about 2" since if you consider that from the nut to the 24th fret the cone has gone from 12" to 16" then by the bridge it will go another 2 inches roughly.

So shim the bridge to an 18" radius by shimming the saddles, or you can set the action using the E strings and deal with the slightly higher action on the A/D/G/B strings like most people do.

Otherwise you will need to raise the E's with 2 - 4 shims and the A/B saddles with 1 - 2 shims until you get an 18" radius and that will sink the tremolo lower into the recess overall.

Also you don't need to have much relief on Jacksons compound-radius. I use .005 - .008.

[norrin radcliff]

I don't even think I could get my Floyd recessed 1/4" if I tried, but that seems pretty ridiculous to have 1/4" difference, so I'm going to say that's some kind of exaggeration on your part, or perhaps you meant 1/8"... And even then, that seems ridiculous. The differences I'm talking about are more like .5 mm or less, maybe 1 mm on the extreme end of tolerance? :think:

Anyway, the Floyd nut is 10" and the bridge end is about a 15" radius and won't match the radius of the fretboard exactly and the action will vary down the fretboard. It is a compound radius fretboard and gets flatter toward the high frets, so the action won't be perfectly consistent on every string/fret unless the nut is 12" and the bridge is about 18" - the bridge has to be flatter than the flattest radius of the neck (16") by about 2" since if you consider that from the nut to the 24th fret the cone has gone from 12" to 16" then by the bridge it will go another 2 inches roughly.

So shim the bridge to an 18" radius by shimming the saddles, or you can set the action using the E strings and deal with the slightly higher action on the A/D/G/B strings like most people do.

Otherwise you will need to raise the E's with 2 - 4 shims and the A/B saddles with 1 - 2 shims until you get an 18" radius and that will sink the tremolo lower into the recess overall.

Also you don't need to have much relief on Jacksons compound-radius. I use .005 - .008.

Yeah I know it sounds like a lot, but the bass side was actually sunk almost 1/4" lower than the treble side - again, I've set up dozens of guitars and had never seen this. I'm going to tear it down tonight and sort it all out. I do know that I've got more relief than necessary, which I'll also dial out tonight. Thanks for your suggestions!

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

I was hoping you wouldn't take that the wrong way and think I was accusing you of lying, but holy crap that is a huge difference.

I wouldn't necessarily expect the Floyd to be perfectly even with respect to the face of the guitar but much more than 1 - 1.5 mm difference I would say is iffy.

[norrin radcliff]

Well, I tore into it last night and confirmed that the saddles are in the correct order. USing a guideline from a previous post I read, I set up the high and low E with 3 shims, and the A/B with 1 shim. I set the bridge flush with the body and measured the the distance from the bottom of each string to the top of each fret at the 12th and 24th frets, with the intention of lowering everything down to where I wanted it after I confirmed that the new saddle radius matched the fretboard.

After going with the 310013 shim setup, I found that the G actually measured about a 64th higher than the D, and the B was a 64th lower than the E (requiring an additional shim). The final shim setup ended as (high to low) 3,2,0,0,1,2. Looking at the radius of the strings, I can detect a nice smooth arc and the measurements are now about as close as they can get without grinding down the G saddle, which I might still do. Again, all of this was done with the base plate raised flush to the body at both posts.

The best I can deduce at this point is that there is a slight tolerance issue on the saddles. The G and B were visibly out of whack before, and after initial shimming. Now they're ok. I'll keep dialing it in.

I was getting so pissed off last night that I was thinking about buying antoher set of saddles just to see if I was crazy, but I'm going to make these work somehow.

[norrin radcliff]

Weekend Success -

After some trial and error (and some work with a flat file), the SL2 is DIALED. I ended up abandoning the "suggested" 310013 shim strategy and went with what worked. The final shim count was something like 2 on the high E, 1 on the B, and 1 on the A, with 1/64 removed from the bottom of the G saddle.

With the posts at equal depth, I've got 3/64" action across all 6 six strings from the 12-24 frets. Now eveything feels PERFECT! No fret out, no buzzing...

[Chad]

Glad to hear that worked out. Maybe there is some truth to the decline in QC with current MIG Floyds. I bought one a few months back and it was fine. But stories like yours coupled with the reasons John Suhr gave for abandoning OFRs and switching to Gotoh....makes ya go....hummmm.