Low E won’t intonate on prs trem

[eclecticsynergy]

After having it set up for a few days and playing it I noticed it sounded off. So I rechecked the intonation and it was reading sharp again. This time the E,A and D were sharp. I contacted the guy i traded with and asked him if he had any problems. He told me he did that’s why he had the bridge decked completely.
he said that’s the only way he could get it to Intonate right. He also told me that he used to use the trem a little too aggressive and messed up holes for the mounting screws. Which would explain why when ever the pivot screws were level the high E side of the bridge was a lot lower than the low E. Upon further inspection I found where he had broken one of the strap button. Screws off in the body and drilled a new hole right beside it.
I told him since he wasn’t upfront about the damage he had done and my SG was brand new and mint. That I wanted it back or was going f to report him on the groups I am on. He already traded the SG off but agreed to give me something of equal value to make it up to me. I have already talked to a tech that said we could bring it by there and he would go over it completely for me. Luckily it’s someone I know and trust and will be completely honest.
im supposed to meet up with him tomorrow. Hopefully he has something good and worth it.

You can't deck a PRS bridge. Even minor adjustments to the six screws will mess things up badly - they should never be touched.
Any time you see damaged screws you can be sure someone has messed with them, cluelessly assuming it was like a Strat bridge.

I hope he has something great on hand for you.

[Top-L]

Having a hard time visualizing this. Good luck.

[man-in-moon]

Yeah I believe the bridge is shifting. It doesn’t have posts for the trem the 6 screws have knife edge slots cut into them. PRS said the bridge should sit at 1/16” off the body all the way around. With the screws level. But with them level the bass side of the bridge was at 1/16 and the treble sits lower not even a 1/32” off the body.
by his own admittance now he said he used the trem to try to do a lot of the dimebag tricks.
And he used it pretty hard I also noticed he has cut the ends of the 6 pivot screws off. I thought maybe this was done by prs. But they informed me the screws should be sticking out into the trem cavity and not flush and in some cases they were below the wood.

[Top-L]

My guess is the posts are shifting in the wood.

If they aren't noticeably wobbly you can fix by coating the insert with Titebond wood glue. Push til it's flush with surface and let dry. The treble side is usually lower than the bass side.

Shifting intonation is either a neck that shifts, or trem posts that shift.

[man-in-moon]

After having it set up for a few days and playing it I noticed it sounded off. So I rechecked the intonation and it was reading sharp again. This time the E,A and D were sharp. I contacted the guy i traded with and asked him if he had any problems. He told me he did that’s why he had the bridge decked completely.
he said that’s the only way he could get it to Intonate right. He also told me that he used to use the trem a little too aggressive and messed up holes for the mounting screws. Which would explain why when ever the pivot screws were level the high E side of the bridge was a lot lower than the low E. Upon further inspection I found where he had broken one of the strap button. Screws off in the body and drilled a new hole right beside it.
I told him since he wasn’t upfront about the damage he had done and my SG was brand new and mint. That I wanted it back or was going f to report him on the groups I am on. He already traded the SG off but agreed to give me something of equal value to make it up to me. I have already talked to a tech that said we could bring it by there and he would go over it completely for me. Luckily it’s someone I know and trust and will be completely honest.
im supposed to meet up with him tomorrow. Hopefully he has something good and worth it.

[jeremy]

american. and there was something wonky with it since once everything was cleaned and reassembled, its fine. hard telling, not knowin

[GuitarDoc]

Wait a minute...is this an American PRS or an SE?

[Chad]

The last time I had a problem like this with intonation, it turned out to be a bad string in a fresh set of strings. Put the old string back again & all was good.

I visited this thread to post exactly this. Anytime I've had problems like the OP is describing, it usually happens with the lowest string and ends up being a bad string. Seems the thicker a string is, the more susceptible it is to being bad and having intonation issues. All that to say, trynew strings or swapping the lowest string and see if that fixes it.

[Wattage]

It’s a weird thing but sometimes you find a fret isn’t exactly where it should be and you can have some screwy intonation spots

[ArtieToo]

Glad you got it working

A tip if you're trying to find out where some issues may lie. Instead of just open string/12th fret for intonation try 3rd/15, 5th/17th, you take the nut out of the equation.

Cool info. I never heard of that before. I'll give that a try. Thanks Wattage.

[Hank-]

The last time I had a problem like this with intonation, it turned out to be a bad string in a fresh set of strings. Put the old string back again & all was good.

[Mincer]

Glad you got it working

A tip if you're trying to find out where some issues may lie. Instead of just open string/12th fret for intonation try 3rd/15, 5th/17th, you take the nut out of the equation.

This is how I do it. Seems to work really well.

[Wattage]

Glad you got it working

A tip if you're trying to find out where some issues may lie. Instead of just open string/12th fret for intonation try 3rd/15, 5th/17th, you take the nut out of the equation.

[ErikH]

I don’t know what’s up with the “PRS guitars should use 9s” thing. I used 10-52 on my two that had trems, zero issues.

That's what my buddy was told with his CE22. I had one PRS and it was a SE with a wraparound. No issues with it. His had a trem though.

[JB_From_Hell]

I don’t know what’s up with the “PRS guitars should use 9s” thing. I used 10-52 on my two that had trems, zero issues.