Marcel's folley #6 a PRS-1H

[Andyxlh]

Yes Swanny I have done the same thing to drift them in. Of course on my first kit, the LP, I forgot to put the earth wire in the bridge hole which introduced a whole lot of fun in getting one of them out using a bolt, large custom washer with a big hole to go over the bridge, and a lot of spacers and nervous sweat!
I think it's looking great in these photos, well done!

[Marcel]

A few days ago in a moment of idleness I put some kit strings on, tensioned them up, played a few notes, was reasonably happy, and the put the build down.

Today, as I walked past while on another task the build caught my eye... Those strings look odd... and I got my string height ruler out and did some checks...

12th fret = 4.7mm
3rd fret = 1.6mm

Way too high.... The neck is reasonably straight, a little can come off the nut, but those bridge posts sleeves must go further into the body at least 2mm or 3mm more..... There is no other way to lower the action as the bridge posts themselves are screwed all the way in.. I hope I don't crack the body whacking them sleeves in further ...

[Marcel]

Dedicated a few hours getting the bridge posts "better". Pulled them out using my special lever pulling tool. Checked the depth of the holes to make sure they could go in deep enough. and then re-inserted them using a much bigger hammer and then re-strung the guitar....The inserts are now flush with the surface of the body which now allows the bridge to sit hard up against the body at the lowest setting.

It gave an improvement, but not what could be hoped for. At the 12th fret the action is still pretty high with 3mm on the high E and 3.5mm on the low E. Additional work on the nut will improve that slightly but not by much.

Now I need to find the wiring colour code for the Epiphone PU's so that I can solder this beastie together. The decision to keep the Epiphone PU's in this build will be dependant on how well it plays/intonates with the higher than ideal action. If it's no good then the PU's, tuners and bridge come out and the build will redone with cheaper kit hardware and it will become a 'Cat Walk Model'.... All looks cos nobody wants to listen to it ....

[Andy40]

Damn, I've only just started sanding mine. I can't wait i can't wait i can't wait!

[Marcel]

Something I plan on doing soon (hopefully tomorrow) is double check the actual heights of the original kit bridge to the one I got from Guitar Fetish. I suspect the GF bridge that I'm currently using is slightly taller that the kit bridge and thus is the underlying cause of my string height issue.

The GF bridge is much nicer and has individual string intonation settings, but it does have substantial meat underneath to hold the string ends and so the reason for overall additional string height.
The other alternative is change to a normal LP style bridge with a trapeze or a stop bar. There is plenty of room to do either...

[Andy40]

Yeah i'll be replacing the kit bridge. I was going to do some research. let me know how this one works out

[Adam Barnes]

Hey maecel could you grind the bottom of the btidge of a mm or 2

[Marcel]

Shaving the bottom of the bridge will no make a difference here Adam... the problem is the height of the string saddles above the bridge post height.

On the kit bridge the strings sit about 5mm above the upper edge of the "slot" in the bridge post (the 'step' in the post where the bridge normally sits) which in my build gives a possibility of a lowest string height of about minus 2.5mm. The GF bridge the strings sit 10mm above the upper edge of the posts and hence the problem.

If using the GF bridge was a 'must have' and to get a reasonable string height without drastically modifying the bridge string saddles then the post thread sleeves need to sink into the body by another 2mm, which would put the bridge full length hard up against the body... I think life will be easier (and look a whole lot neater) if I just go back to the kit bridge and live with it...

[JohnH]

Ah, what a bugger. I guess it's one of the hazards of building a kit, but it's still pretty annoying

[Marcel]

While the wife is away the husband can bring his projects inside so he can work on them in air conditioned comfort... and maintain said comfort with a generator while mother nature reeks havoc on the mains power supply.... What a wonderful start to the year...

Anyways....

I replaced the bridge... put back the kit bridge... strung it up with a 9-46 set of NY-XL's as the set of Ernie Ball''s I grabbed from the shed were 11-46's and not the 10's I wanted, and it was raining so I thought 'bugger that...'... Wired up the PU's to pull switch pots so that I could have individual SC/HB switching on each PU.... tucked everything (all the wires) neatly into place. Tuned and intonated (which went surprisingly well) and then tried it out on my VOX VT40X...

At first I thought it was the amp, but then I tried the Tele and the LP and determined that indeed this PRS-1H build sounded Very bright... extremely bright .... Swapping back and forth between the guitars... and then at one stage when the vol pot on the PRS-1H didn't fully mute the guitar it suddenly dawned on me my error.. I had not put the earth wire on the vol pot... everything else worked fine. just that the vol control doesn't mute the guitar and the guitar sounds abnormally bright .... but it works, and doesn't sound half bad, actually it is kinda bad-ass in an acoustic way...

When I get the inclination I'll pull the vol control out and fix it, but until then... and yeah the string ends need trimming...