Non recessed floyd route setup

[VanHeGen]

try a sliver of business card between the neck screws closest to the neck pickup. since u did 12-16 radius... is it a plain Floyd Rose Original™? those have like a 10 radius out the box, same as a R2/3/4. if you remove the shims under the saddles it'll be a 12, or you can adjust them to make it flatter. ime (in my experience) going 16 or 18" at the bridge is best. if not, even if u have the bridge at the 'correct" height the arch of the strings will be freaked up. find a aftermarket 12" floyd style nut and adjust the shims to make the bridge 16 or flatter. right now with just a original Floyd and a 12-16 neck your geometry is just wrong. functional, but far from ideal

@BroccoliRob thx, that sounds alarming!

I planned the guitar for two years, asked all possible questions on this forum, other forums, from Warmoth, Schaller, etc. The (compatible) radius part was one of the things that I focused the most on, so I would have assumed that would have been correct. All my research and findings are documented here, btw https://unofficialwarmoth.com/threads/coffee-–-my-“superstrat-with-a-twist”-build-and-lessons-learned.34904/

My Floyd is a Lockmeister 6 that is 12” out of thebox and 16” when the shims under it are removed (they are). There are separate shims under the individual string saddles in the bridge, for the geometry - to make it about 18” at the bridge.. The locking nut is 12” (also Lockmeister). The neck is a 24.75 conversion neck, btw.

When it comes to the neck shims one can appraently buy them from like Stewmac, and based on this article things should be doable with them. Finding the right shim (combination) might apparently be difficult ??? https://hazeguitars.com/how-to-shim-a-bolt-on-neck

 

[supertruper1988]

@BroccoliRob thx, that sounds alarming!

I planned the guitar for two years, asked all possible questions on this forum, other forums, from Warmoth, Schaller, etc. The (compatible) radius part was one of the things that I focused the most on, so I would have assumed that would have been correct. All my research and findings are documented here, btw https://unofficialwarmoth.com/threads/coffee-–-my-“superstrat-with-a-twist”-build-and-lessons-learned.34904/

My Floyd is a Lockmeister 6 that is 12” out of thebox and 16” when the shims under it are removed (they are). There are separate shims under the individual string saddles in the bridge, for the geometry - to make it about 18” at the bridge.. The locking nut is 12” (also Lockmeister). The neck is a 24.75 conversion neck, btw.

When it comes to the neck shims one can appraently buy them from like Stewmac, and based on this article things should be doable with them. Finding the right shim (combination) might apparently be difficult ??? https://hazeguitars.com/how-to-shim-a-bolt-on-neck

I like the full pocket shims and they are easy to use just gotta take the neck off if you get it a little wrong. since you have the angled pocket already, I would start with the middle shim (0.5 degree) and go up and down from there

Also look at amazon for similar shims without the StewMac tax

 

[BroccoliRob]

@BroccoliRob thx, that sounds alarming!

I planned the guitar for two years, asked all possible questions on this forum, other forums, from Warmoth, Schaller, etc. The (compatible) radius part was one of the things that I focused the most on, so I would have assumed that would have been correct. All my research and findings are documented here, btw https://unofficialwarmoth.com/threads/coffee-–-my-“superstrat-with-a-twist”-build-and-lessons-learned.34904/

My Floyd is a Lockmeister 6 that is 12” out of thebox and 16” when the shims under it are removed (they are). There are separate shims under the individual string saddles in the bridge, for the geometry - to make it about 18” at the bridge.. The locking nut is 12” (also Lockmeister). The neck is a 24.75 conversion neck, btw.

When it comes to the neck shims one can appraently buy them from like Stewmac, and based on this article things should be doable with them. Finding the right shim (combination) might apparently be difficult ??? https://hazeguitars.com/how-to-shim-a-bolt-on-neck

nice nice

The full pocket shims are overrated, a strip or two of business card is time tested and your tone isn't gonna suffer. People crack open 60 years old Fenders and find cardboard from cigarette boxes and fragments of guitar picks all the time.

heck, even you do want to do a full pocket shim, you gotta take the neck off any way so u might as well try a b card while you wait. you've got nothing to lose

 

[VanHeGen]

Thank @BroccoliRob and @supertruper1988 for your time and all information! I’ll go back to the planning/drawing board….

 

[rauchman]

nice nice

The full pocket shims are overrated, a strip or two of business card is time tested and your tone isn't gonna suffer. People crack open 60 years old Fenders and find cardboard from cigarette boxes and fragments of guitar picks all the time.

heck, even you do want to do a full pocket shim, you gotta take the neck off any way so u might as well try a b card while you wait. you've got nothing to lose

When they were more commonly available, matchbook covers worked great for this.

 

[bruzanhd]

Thank @BroccoliRob and @supertruper1988 for your time and all information! I’ll go back to the planning/drawing board….

Consider removing the spring plate and block shim from the Floyd, as well as all the radius shims. It will get the bridge somewhere near 1mm lower (give or take a bit). I can't tell from the pictures in your thread if you've already done this.

For the nut, the correct way to do this is to lower the nut shelf. Use a fine grit sand paper like 250-400 and lower the nut shelf very slowly. The material will not come off quickly so the risk is low. Worst case scenario, you can shim the nut back up easily, and you can also shim the neck to adjust the action. Measure the nut relief to determine if the nut truly is too high.

I suspect you will have difficulty finding this setup information, I know I did. If you can't figure out a solution feel free to reach out. Just built another warmoth with a similar setup to what I've used in the past and It works good as ever.

 

[VanHeGen]

@bruzanhd thank you for the information!

There is now a 0.25 shim in the neck. The bridge shim was removed before it was installed, so nothing to do there, but there were shims placed under the saddles (for the radius), and the ones under the E strings were now removed. This has made the upper fret access lower according to my tech. However, the guitar is still at my tech, so I can’t confirm it.

My tech also measured the locking nut, which was 2mm higher than the locking nut on my Wolfgang! Thus access on the low frets was insanely high, and playing chords hard. Instead of starting sanding the nut shelf or locking nut itself, I have decided to replace it with a Graph Tech un-lock nut. Modifying the height of that (when needed) is much easier.

The main reason for this is that the guitar doesn’t stay in tune, and I have to open the locking nut every time and use the tuners on the headstock, because the bridge fine tuners are not enough. So as I am anyway using the headstock tuners, I am going to replace the locking nut with the Graphtech, and get some locking, staggered tuners. And then I will also know if the tuning instability has had something to do with locking nut (as it will be out of the equation).

The Graphtech nut is black, so somewhat ugly, but Guthrie Govan has his guitar set up like this, so it should work. We’ll see…

 

[stratamania]

Do you have a retainer bar on the guitar. It needs adjusting if it goes out of tune when locking the nut.

 

[VanHeGen]

Do you have a retainer bar on the guitar. It needs adjusting if it goes out of tune when locking the nut.

@stratamania good point, I do have a retainer bar. And yes, when I lock the nut after having used the headstock tuners, the tuning changes. However, the tuning goes off when the nut is locked, just after playing a song or two, without doeing any heavy bends. But I’ll check the retainer bar, thx!

 

[bruzanhd]

@stratamania good point, I do have a retainer bar. And yes, when I lock the nut after having used the headstock tuners, the tuning changes. However, the tuning goes off when the nut is locked, just after playing a song or two, without doeing any heavy bends. But I’ll check the retainer bar, thx!

You may need to lower the retainer bar quite a bit to the point where locking the strings does not affect the tuning.

 

[stratamania]

@stratamania good point, I do have a retainer bar. And yes, when I lock the nut after having used the headstock tuners, the tuning changes. However, the tuning goes off when the nut is locked, just after playing a song or two, without doeing any heavy bends. But I’ll check the retainer bar, thx!

Also, if the nut is too high as mentioned earlier, it is likely that is also contributing to the issues you have described. It just needs setting up.

 

[VanHeGen]

Also, if the nut is too high as mentioned earlier, it is likely that is also contributing to the issues you have described. It just needs setting up.

@stratamania Yes, most probably. That locking nut seems massive (high). But as fixing things (working on the nut itself or the guitar neck) feels a bit too much for me (and my tech friend), I will probably get rid of the locking nut and put the
Graphtech unlock nut there, instead.

 

[stratamania]

@stratamania Yes, most probably. That locking nut seems massive (high). But as fixing things (working on the nut itself or the guitar neck) feels a bit too much for me (and my tech friend), I will probably get rid of the locking nut and put the
Graphtech unlock nut there, instead.

Perhaps a better tech is needed. It should not be that difficult.