Okay, I have an Ibanez Silver Cadet with a licensed Floyd Rose bridge. My friend has the best epiphone les paul, which is nice, but not that incredibly great, right? His is much, much better than mine right now, though, because his action is so low and there aren't any buzzes at all.

I've tried adjusting my bridge's height to the very lowest it will go before the strings start to buzz by hitting the next higher fret, and it's just not that low. Also, the distance from fretboard to string is equal all the way down his neck, while, on mine, the distance is very small on the first several frets, but the ones near 20 are much further away. I'm positive that my neck isn't warped, because I've tried checking the distance all the way down the neck after fretting the first and last frets on the low e string, and it looks totally straight to me.

What else can I do? Is that knob up near the neck of the guitar something I should play around with to get my action lower? I've heard it can be a dangerous thing to mess with and is very rarely needed, so is that not what I should try next? Adding shims under each string on the bridge also seems like something basically never needed. But somehow my strings are just angled so that the further you go down the neck, the further away the strings are.

Somebody please, help me I know my guitar isn't just plain crap and won't allow me to have a good action.. there's got to be a way. I've had it many years and never got around to trying to tweak it out, but now I think I'm at the skill where I'd really benefit from the lowest possible action, so I definitely want to get that. Thanks!

Hey Buddy
Your bridge saddles will raise or lower your action. If this doesn't help, you can try the truss rod located in your neck. Be careful with this though... you could do more damage than good if you adjust it too much. You're better off giving it to a good tech to adjust it or you. Remember, once you set it up, it should be good for (basically) ever. That is, unless you change your string gauges, tuning and intonation, or action. I had a hell of a time setting up the Floyd in my Beast, butonce it is set up, it stays in tune perfectly. Hope this helps.

take it to your local shop or guitar tech and see what they say. Best to be safe than sorry

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thanks for the advice. i actually came across that guitarproject site before while looking up how to do it. as it turns out, i had to tighten the truss rod, but i played it safe and took it to a shop to find that out. better than writing off my guitar, i guess, although i just found out that i'll probably be getting a gibson les paul soon. =)))