Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

My new 620FG is awesome! I tweaked the truss rods to make the neck just about as straight as I can get it, and raised the bridge to accomodate this change. I noticed that the bridge was shipped with the four height adjustment screws configured so that the bridge tilts slightly toward the neck (i.e. the two screws nearest the neck are screwed down a little bit further than the two screws furthest from the neck). Is this normal, or should I adjust it so that all four height adjustment screws are screwed down equally? It plays and looks just fine as-is, but I am curious as to why the tilt exists. Thanks!

The height of all four screws should be equal. Once you even up the screws and reset the bridge height, you will probably have to reintonate as well.

Okay, well I adjusted all the screws to the same height. I checked the intonation and it's pretty darn close (as accurate as I can get it with my Peterson StroboFlip and my fretting technique), so I'll leave it alone. Speaking of intonation, all the strings are really intonated well. But the low E is a "little" off, even with the bridge saddle adjusted as far back as it will go. I am guessing that to go any further back would require removing the spring. If I do that, do I just move the spring to the other side of the saddle? I might just forget about it, cuz it's pretty close to being perfectly intonated right now. The intonation is close enough that the variance in my fretting of the string at the 12th fret will produce a little error, depending on how hard I fret it, if I angle my finger at all, etc. If I am noticing all this, then maybe I am "close enough" and should forget about it...

If you lift the bridge off you can adjust the bridge plate a little as it has slotted screw holes.

Ahh! Very good point! Thanks for the tip...

ken_j wrote:If you lift the bridge off you can adjust the bridge plate a little as it has slotted screw holes.

I have seen this before on new 620 models.

I'm going to take the bridge off tonight and make the coarse intonation adjustment using the screws joining the bridge bottom plate to the body. Anything I should look out for when doing this?

Thanks!

You'll want to set your bridge plate so that each of your bridge saddles still has some adjustment once intonation is set for each string.

Got it done!

The bridge plate was initially in the all-the-way forward (toward the neck) position. I moved it all the way to the rear. Then I moved all the saddles far forward a good bit so that when I set the intonation for each string, I turned the adjustment screw clockwise to pull the saddle rearward only until proper intonation was achieved. All strings intonated very nicely and there is extra room both ways for each saddle for future adjustments. This really was not difficult at all. It just required much patience! I am fairly new to doing this sort of stuff on my guitars. It feels good to be able to do it myself! Now I'll know for next time.

Props to you, Jim.

JimK

Good job, Jim!

I actually do the majority of my own setup and intonation work on all my instruments. I even got brave and fixed the stereo on my 4001 wiring. The guys here are a great resource for help.

Glad to hear it worked well for you.