Original Floyd Rose/Warmoth neck dilemma.

[soapbarblues]

New guy here, but have had half a dozen Warmoth necks. I also build a guitar now and then.
A close family friend asked me to make 2 guitars for him, and provided 2 Warmoth necks with the compound radius, and they also sold him 2 original Floyd Rose trems, one chrome one black, and he sent the parts to me.
In pre-assembly, I find that the FRs are 10" radius, and the heel of the fretboard is 16" which makes a good setup impossible. The middle strings are way too high off the fretboard.
In all fairness, I haven't had the opportunity to contact Warmoth support yet due to this being a weekend, but I wanted to try and get the ball rolling.
How can this be remedied? I would think that this issue has come up before, but I searched 20 pages in hardware before I joined and posted.
Thanks for your time.
Allan.

 

[croquet hoop]

Welcome to the forum! This is quite common with Floyd trems, search for "floyd shims". You just need to shim the saddles to bring it close to a 18" radius.

 

[soapbarblues]

Thank you for the welcome and the answer!  :icon_thumright: I will certainly look into the saddle shims.
I also just looked at the Stewmac site and see they have replacement saddles that measure out to 14" radius.
Do you think it would be better to shim the saddles or buy the replacements from SM?

Thanks!

 

[croquet hoop]

Buying saddles intended to give a 14" radius will be both more expensive and less effective than using shims to bring the bridge to the correct radius (in this case, around 18", since you'll be using necks with a compound radius). It might look like a dirty workaround, but it's not — it's very common on (properly set-up) guitars with Floyds. Shims are also used to adjust the locking nut height, for that matter.

 

[soapbarblues]

Thanks so much, Mr. Hoop!!
I've been around guitars a long time, but this is my first foray into  FR bridges. So it is all a big learning curve to me.
thanks for your time and input.
Allan.

 

[ORCRiST]

I'd go with shims over saddles IMHO.

Check out this thread: http://unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=15908.msg231986#msg231986

HTH,

ORC

 

[stubhead]

I know the idea is to leave the D & G strings alone, add one shim to the A & B strings, and two shims each to the high and low strings. It may be even more with the Warmoths I also know that there is a fair segment of the populace who would rather cowboy it, using shims cut out of beer cans, but unless you have a way to measure what thickness that actually gets to, it may be better to go legit. Unless you find a really good set of instructions for the beer cans.

This guy:
http://www.ibanezrules.com/parts.htm#Trem_Parts

Is like the King of Whammyland, about 2/5ths of the way down the list he has "saddle shims."

He also has some pretty detailed setup information, his bread and butter are Ibeni but there's still a lot of similarity -
http://www.ibanezrules.com/tech/setup/index.htm

I'm not personally a Floydoid, never have been, but the Jemsite Forum and sevenstring.org have some serious tech information. By now there's sure to be some guides on shimming and Floyd setup on YouTube, but you'll probably want to read a few and make sure they're agreeing on stuff before you launch into it.

 

[soapbarblues]

Thanks for all the input and suggestions. I was able to fix the problem with a little disassembly. After reading all the posts of shims, I decided to take take the bridge apart that will go on the second body. The original FR has a 10" radius out of the package. After taking the 4 middle saddles off, a shim was under those 4, not under the two "E" string saddles. That shim measures .015", so removing that shim made the radius almost perfect!
Thought I would share this, and thanks again for all the information.
ccasion14:
Allan

 

[soapbarblues]

I thought I should at least show you what I'm working on. I made the body out of basswood, finished in Reranch surf green and Behlen Instrument Lacquer. Warmoth neck, maple/rosewood 10-16" compound radius, Seymour Duncan Distortion Trembucker, and volume control. Has the uprout but I have a block of thin wood in it for setup purposes.


The other guitar is a pine offset with 2 humbuckers, black OFR, and Warmoth Strat neck.

 

[SustainerPlayer]

Nice!  :icon_thumright:

Shimming the saddles works quite well. I've done so on this La Cabronita Shredder:

 

[croquet hoop]

That surf green tele body looks great! It this a 25.5" neck with fretboard extension, or something else with a different scale length?

 

[soapbarblues]

That surf green tele body looks great! It this a 25.5" neck with fretboard extension, or something else with a different scale length?

thank you!  it's a 24 fret neck with 24 3/4" scale.

 

[soapbarblues]

I have to add a correction, and my face is a little red. I was going by what my friend said about it being a Warmoth neck. turns out it's a Charvel neck, 24 fret, 24 3/4" scale, the logo has been removed.
The other guitar is definitely a Warmoth strat neck with 25 1/2" scale, pics to come soon. I'm still in the process of buffing out the body.