Peavey Wolfgang Standard Setup Questions

peckhart

Active member
Recently acquired a Peavey Wolfgang standard and I am trying to get the action a bit lower.

The first question I have is related to the radius of the fretboard in relation to the radius of the Floyd saddles. My understanding is the guitar has a 15" radius while Floyd's are typically 12". I haven't pulled the bridge apart to look nor have I measured anything, but I am getting the impression they are indeed off from each other. The strings seem to be a bit higher in the middle. Is that normal? Should I try to shim the saddles to create a matching 15" radius? My LP Axcess has a 12" radius and definitely feels more consistent across the strings.
My second challenge is around balancing the string height and how the bridge is sitting on the non floating trem route. When I got it, I noticed the action was a little higher than I like but the bridge was sitting with the front dipped lower than the back. On floating bridges that is corrected by tightening the claw screws, but that is not possible because the back of the bridge is already in contact with the body.
I tried putting in some shims I had from StewMac. The 1 degree shim was way too much. The .5 was probably usable, but now my problem went in reverse meaning the front of the bridge had to go higher than the back. The action was still a little too low now with the .5 in before I just reverted back to no shim at all. I was starting to get uncomfortable with just how much I had to back out the trem studs to keep getting the action up.
So I am back to no shim and have the studs down pretty far and a tilted forward bridge. I would still like the action a little lower, but I also seem to have a slight dead spot when I bend at the 15th fret so that may be more on the frets themselves.

Just curious about the radius thing and if anyone else has played with the setups on these and ran into similar situations the non floating trem route has me in here.
 
To get the action lower on a wolfgang you need to shim the back pocket area of the neck. Back in my high school days we used everything from playing cards to a couple of cut up nylon guitar picks. You can get neck pocket shims for fairly cheap these days - invest in some and see what you think.

Make sure the neck doesn't have any positive bow in it. I tend to like a fairly flat neck with a total tilt on the neck to around 20 thousandths. Note that when the neck is tilted back, the trem will possibly need to be raised to keep even string height across the fretboard. Think about how you're changing the geometry. It may take some time to get it adjusted to your preferences.

The stock bridges are flat with a slanted side to them - it's perceived as being slanted but they really shouldn't be slanted forward or reverse if the trem is sitting flush against the guitar body.

The wolfgangs are 15" flat radius. I never had to touch mine for fret buzz so it sounds to me like it may need a fret leveling.

Hope this helps a bit!
 
Thanks for jumping in glpg80. I did try to shim it, but the ones I had were too high. I am going to order the .25 and see if that lines things up better.
And I agree the frets likely do need to be addressed. The guitar is 20yrs old after all.
 
As an update, the .25 shim seems to have solved the setup issues. I can now set the trem to be level and the action is nice and low. Not having the fret out issue on the high E up above the 12th fret when I bend now either.
I don't hate the stock trem, but I've come to love the feel and performance of the Gotoh so I ordered one for this guitar. Came with a new R2 sized but as well. Will be hooking all that up soon.
 
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