Action/trem issue with RG220B

[supreeth]

Greetings Everyone,

I'm new to this forum and have been really impressed with the amount of knowledge one can find here on various guitar topics. I recently bought a used Ibanez 220B (#C01025303) as a project guitar and have been setting it up. After hours of doing the "balancing act" on the floating bridge, I finally got it to be parallel to the body (phew!). The action on the guitar was insanely high (> 3mm at the 24th fret). I lowered the bridge by tightening the tremolo studs a couple of turns. The action is manageable now but it should be lower ideally. How do I go about lowering the action further? Would I have to adjust the truss rod?

Another issue is that when I pull up on the tremolo, the G string hits the 24th fret (yes, only the G string!) when the arm is pulled to raise the pitch by about 2 steps. Is this because I lowered the action? Ideally I would like to be able to pull up 3 steps without the strings touching the frets. The guitar has a licensed floyd rose bridge (It doesn't bear Ibanez's name anywhere) Would changing the bridge help at all? Any advice on lowering the action and solving the problem of the string touching the fret on a tremolo pull up would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Supreeth

[john1880]

When you pull up on the bar, the saddles are going lower into the body, therefore making the strings closer to the neck. You may need to adjust your trussrod. Look at the neck from one end to the other, along the side. If the neck is almost straight with just a slight bow around the 4-9 frets, it's probably okay. If there is a lot of bow so that the strings are much higher in that 4-9 fret area, then you can tighten the trussrod. But do it slowly, maybe 1/2 turn. Check the neck again...Then when it's where it looks good, let it sit overnight, check it again the next day.
Once you straighten the neck(If needed)leaving a little bit of bow, you'll probably need to raise the action again.
I don't think changing the trem would solve your problem. Anyway, the Edge or Low pro edge won't fit on the 220B because the routing is different.
The first thing is to get that neck right. Then you can check your frets and see if maybe the 24th fret popped up or something. 3 Steps of pullup seems like a lot, and I don't know if you can have low action and get the 3 steps. How 'bout a whammy pedal? :-) Hope this helps.
Try www.ibanezrules.com for some awesome setup tips. You may find everything you need there.

[john1880]

Here's some good action setup info.
http://www.ibanezrules.com/tech/setup/action.htm

[supreeth]

Thanks for the advice John. Much appreciated. I'll check out the link you posted.

I'm a newbie when it comes to floyd rose based locking systems. I've played mainly on guitars with fixed bridges except for my Music Man JP guitar which has a non locking floating bridge with locking tuners. I bought the RG220 to experiment with the Floyd rose system (I got it for $130...so no complaints) :-) I'm thinking about investing in a Boss PS-5 to get my Whammy pulls (I can't get enough of Vai these days) :-> I wish I could afford a Jem7V, but that'll have to wait.

[john1880]

Yeah, Vai is awesome. I'll be seeing him in concert on April 30. I'm pretty psyched! The 220B will do for now. You got a good deal. Keep me posted with your setup progress.

[supreeth]

I checked for neck bow and to my surprise, it is straight as an arrow. The problem seems to be that the action at the first fret is extremely high. I'm going to see if there's a nut shim I can get rid of.

Yes, Vai is amazing. I'm seeing him on 24th April. It'll be my first time seeing Vai in a non G3 atmosphere