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Being novice to Floyd Rose guitars, I've been panicking after tuning my guitar for the very first time. After rummaging through a few YouTube videos , I've been able to keep my guitar in tune which required several iterations of adjusting the pitch of the strings in the following order : E (6th) , E(1st) , B (2nd), A(5th), G(3rd), D(4th).

But now, the bridge isn't parallel to the body anymore. I thought it's time for tightening the spring screws

So I tried to loosen and tighten the spring screws for a number of times (considering the screws have a upper limit of tightening) but the Bridge isn't changing any angle with the body unless I loosen the strings tensions. Simply put, the spring screws aren't altering the bridge position.

Is this normal? I guess there should be some viable solution to this . enter image description here

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    Those two large screws (show vertical in the 2nd pic) should tighten into the wood and start to stretch the 3 springs. There ought to be enough adjustment there to flatten the top side of the bridge. That's what they are there for - to adjust the tension that the springs make, counteracting the tension of the strings on the other side. Fender vibs work in a similar manner. This question is most likely a dupe. Check answers we have already been given.
    – Tim
    Aug 30, 2019 at 11:45

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Yeah don’t loosen those screws, just tighten them. A lot. You should see the claw (that the screws go through) move like 1/4” towards the wood.

Before you tighten the claw screws, loosen the strings. Then, don’t be shy about tightening that claw. If you’ve loosened the strings then you can tighten the claw until the bridge is to low. Then when you tune the strings back up it should lift the bridge closer to the correct position.

With a Floyd Rose, you will have to iterate through the tuning many times to get it tuned. Once you’ve got it tuned and locked down, you can usually go for quite a while just making minor adjustments with the fine tuners at the bridge. But the initial setup with the bridge height and so on will take a while. Maybe even hours.

I wonder if what’s confusing is that after you tighten the claw screws, you have to retune all the strings or else the bridge won’t be in its final position.

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  • Thanks a lot. I was really afraid since the tightening was taking too much force to deal with. I used a deck of cards to in the spring side to keep the bridges fixed and parallel to the body, did the tuning, and later tightened the claws enough so that the cards came loose. The claw screws are just so close to the wood after the bridge is parallel to the body so I was wondering whether it's almost impossible to fix this , but I'm glad it worked out.
    – user192791
    Aug 30, 2019 at 17:47
  • Facing another problem if you don't mind to discuss here : I took off the whammy bar during the whole tuning and adjusting process ; now that I've put it back to test the effects, it seems that when I activate the dive bomb, the high E (1st) string isn't coming loose enough as it should be compared to the other strings. Any words on that?
    – user192791
    Aug 30, 2019 at 17:51

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