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I have a Ibanez S7420 7-string with the ZR2 bridge and I think I just majorly screwed it up.

The guitar was set up for standard 7-string tuning (BEADGBE) and I set it to A# F A# D# G C D# (tuning up strings 6-2 and lowering the 1 and 7 a semitone) for 3 days and now my E-string (the high-pitched one) is touching the bridge pick-up. I know that to properly play in a new tuning I'd have to re-do the guitar's set up, but this tuning change was only to check it out temporarily.

Upon closer inspection of the whole guitar, it looks like the bridge got tilted side-ways due to the whacky increase in tension. I do remember the bridge making a springy "tick!" noise at one point during playing.

So my question is, should I attempt to straighten out the bridge again by adjusting the screws that control its height? I usually set up my own guitar, so I'm not exactly afraid to work on it, but I've never had to adjust this part of the bridge before and the manual says absolutely nothing about doing it either.

I've got an album of pictures with descriptions up here, any help is appreciated: https://i.sstatic.net/1KPWR.jpg

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    I'd guess the first thing to do would be strip the bridge out & see what broke... or if you're lucky, just slipped out of its socket.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 16, 2017 at 13:03
  • Not an expert on this particular guitar, but I would recommend sending it to an expert, perhaps the people you bought it from if possible. In general (although maybe not with your guitar), it is extremely cheap to have someone reset the bridge.
    – Ambluj
    Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 23:02

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I can only see two possibilities here - one is easily fixable (and is the most likely). The allen bolts that the bridge rests on sit deeply into the guitar, so shouldn't have ever moved, so all I can think is that the treble end bolt may have always been a little deeper into the guitar and the bridge was sitting at the correct height by catching a little - and when you changed the tension it slipped down to its "natural" rest point.

First off you'll need to remove the strings and tension springs to reduce the tension, so you can adjust the allen keys that set height. They are the two black bolts circled in red in the picture below from Ultimate-Guitar.com.

Once the tension is off, loosen the locking nut on the treble side of the bridge so you can turn the allen bolt. All being well, this should feel solid, and firmly fixed into the guitar, and will let you adjust the height. I prefer to take the bridge off completely to adjust these, but in your case it may be easiest to leave it on so you can easily check height.

enter image description here The other possibility is that something has broken in one of the bearings or you have snapped some of the wood around where the allen bolt sits... You may be able to spot this when you lift the bridge off. I'd suggest taking it to your local guitar tech if this is the case.

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The Edge Zero 2 bridges have a stud-lock in the mounting posts as shown here:

enter image description here

I'm not intimately familiar with the ZR/ZR2s but its possible these have the same thing (and it might have been loose on the high-E side).

Other unfortunate possibility is that the thread either on the post, or the insert it threads into is stripped, meaning that it wont hold position.

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