Yet another fret buzz thread

On my PRS, I have my neck set to where it's just ever so slightly convcave which seems to help with fret buzz, but I'm not crazy about the string height's. If I lower my bridge anymore, I get too much fret buzz. What I don't like about it is how it's nice and low close to the nut, but say from the 7-10th fret up is a bit high for my taste. I've tried everything from lowering the bridge with the neck flat, concave and convex, and I just can't get it to have a somewhat uniform string height without too much fret buzz. I know it's going to get higher as it get's closer to the body, but it would be nice if it could be a bit lower than it is. Any idea's? Maybe I should try to make the neck a little more concave (add relief?) than I've been doing. Right now, I have it set so that when you fret at the 1st and 12th, there is between 1/64" and 1/32" space between the strings and frets at the 5th fret. Maybe I should try 1 millimeter to 1/16" space? (1/16" would seem to be a bit much though)

I'm not super-familiar with PRS guitars. I haven't worked on a lot of them since most people don't have the money to own them. haha... However, you are fortunate to own one. I believe they are similar to a Les Paul though. When the factory sets the neck they set it at a 3 degree (or slightly more) angle in orientation to the body... most stop tailpiece guitars are set up this way. This allows the strings to get a better angle on the tailpiece, stiffening the metal to metal contact and giving the guitar more sustain. When they do this, it should allow you to play a set-up that requires a lot less relief. You should be able to set your neck to be almost straight (literally, with maybe only a very-very-very slight relief). First, tune your guitar down a half step... this will relieve some of the string tension for you to tighten the truss rod safely. Then tighten the truss rod until it's pretty straight... then tune your guitar back to what tuning you would like. Fine tune it so make sure it's about straight. Then sight the neck to see how the strings are laying on the neck. If the strings touch the first fret it's obvious that you will need to add a tad of relief no matter what. If it's not, and I suspect that it won't... you might have to adjust the bridge a little. Play around with that, if it buzzes... I suggest setting it back up to how you had it. An alternative would be to get the 10-22/24 frets dressed and shaved just slightly. Since buzzing is cuased by very slight metal contact in vibration, the very little metal that is taken off in the dressing process might allow the proper clearence to run a lower set-up without buzzing. Consult a pro guitar tech if what I suggested isn't satisfactory.

Great suggestions. I'm probalby wrong, but I don't think the PRS's neck is angled quite as much as a Gibson style guitar, but I'm probably wrong on that.(it's probably just the different feel of a tune-o-matic compaired to the PRS wrap-around bridge that makes me think that). I also tune to half a step down anyway, as my standard, using 10-52 strings. I'm not much of a lead guitarist, so I wouldn't doubt that the fret's could use a little attention to even things out. I can defanately see where the fret's are worn down/have indentions the lower down the neck you go. I plan to have a few mod's done to the guitar sometime soon (hopefully), so I'll probably have the tech to dress the frets along with the setup.

Thanks for your reply

Yeah, I'm not positive on the whole neck angling either... so I could be wrong. haha. The heavy gauge strings and tuning down definitly could be part of the problem though. Since you do both I don't suggest that you straighten the neck out. You will need relief to play without buzz. The heavier the strings the more they vibrate... and the more they're tuned down the more they vibrate. So combining the two makes it that much harder to get low action. You will kind of have to sacrafice the action unless you can live with a little buzz. haha. A fret dressing might help out a little though.

Just a query, are the PRS bridge saddles adjustable on your's, if so you could try lowering them just enough to give you back a lttle action, maybe. :confused:

[font=ttrebuchet ms]As mentioned, heavy strings tuned low require higher action to avoid fret-buzz. About the only thing left to try is shimming the nut to raise it a few thou. This may allow you to lower the bridge a bit more to trade off higher action near the nut for a slightly lower action closer to the bridge. It depends on where you're fretting the strings when they buzz, and which frets they're buzzing against.[/font]

A lot of it was just new string buzz. It's cleared up conciderably. Guess it had been so long since I changed the strings on that guitar that I forgot about new string buzz :rolleyes: