I've been wanting to put heavier strings on my S5470, but if I do, I can't get the intonation right. The ZR just doesn't go down low enough. Anything past .012 gauge strings seem to come up this way.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to how to get around this. Would a different version of the ZR work? Are there other trems that I could put in there instead?

Ideally, I would like to get .015 to .064 gauge strings... But I don't want to have to buy a 7 string or baritone guitar.

What other tunings would help? I've tried tuning it down to as low as C standard and it still didn't work. I'd like to play in C standard, but I'd also like to have tense strings.

.015-.064 in E Standard? lol!

That's sick ... not necessarily wrong, but yeah I could imagine that would lead to intonation problems.

LOL have you considered trying to tune 7 semitones down at A Standard? I'm sure you could rather easily with gauges that high, idk if it would solve your intonation problem.

Might it also be possible to machine drill a third intonation hole into the baseplate of the ZR?

+1

The only thing I would be careful about is truss rod adjustment but ... .015 is perhaps doable but it's certainly on the *extreme* end of putting tension on the neck, if all the strings are proportionally thicker and not just one or two.

Bro I can't even find a set of strings heavier than .013-.056, except for ones meant for a baritone guitar; even then the two sets for those I found only go up to .014, and the heaviest jazz sets max out at .013.

Why are you trying to put such heavy strings on your guitar? You certainly don't need them for Drop C, I play in Drop C with .010s and .011s and there is more than enough tension. .015s are overkill, I would consider putting .015s on only if I was tuning to something like Drop G.

I hate to say it man but I don't think most guitars are even *designed* to handle such heavy strings, which is (ultimately) why it won't intonate properly. I imagine if you could get it to intonate you'd just be putting too much stress on the neck.

A standard stock D'Addario .009 tuned to E4 (the high E) puts 13.1 lbs. of tension on the neck. By contrast, a D'Addario .015 tuned to D4 (from Drop C tuning) puts 28.9 lbs. of tension on the neck! I would expect a .015 to *snap* before you could even get within a few semitones of the note you want to tune it to ... or any string for that matter, even many of the wound ones can't handle that much tension.