Pretty straightforward question for anyone who knows the answer. I know I can buy 5 springs to yank it all the way back, but I don’t think that will suffice because I have a VERY heavy hand and I think it will still go sharp while playing.
Is there a locking device I can buy? If so is it hard to install? IS there a home remedy? Do I have to raise the bridge when it is locked down?
As a side note, for anyone who is looking to learn guitar take my advice. You do not need a Whammy Bar. No matter how much you think they look cool you will regret spending the extra money on one and they are a real pain in the arse. In my youth I passed up a bottom of the line PRS for $900 bucks and instead bought an Ibanez RG series for 800 JUST because it had a FLoyd Rose and I never had one before.
Big mistake. I played with the FR for about 5 minutes and then never used it again.
I bought a $200 fender stratocaster (with a whammy of course) and have never had a problem. (my original guitar had a floyd rose and still never had a problem). IMO it’s better to have a whammy bar than not to, there’s so many styles that it’s essential for i.e. surf music, swing, rockabilly. I’m a bigsby fan myself, mainly because the tone drop of each string is a bit arbitrary, which gives it a nice raw sort of feel (listen to sleepwalk by brian setzer for the feel i’m talking about), unless you’re playing some van halen, or steve vai that’s when i’d suggest a floyd rose.
So, let me get this straight when you aren’t holding the whammy, you’re afraid it will go sharp, but you need 5 springs because you have a heavy hand.
If you ask most guitarists/techies they’ll tell just to work on your technique and don’t push so hard. I personally like a sensitive whammy because you can get a faster vibrato. When I had my floyd rose I was used to it being very tight, then I switched to a strat and it was MUCH lighter, after about 2 weeks of making sure I didn’t put excessive weight on the puppy, i grew to love it.
I’m going to put another spring in my strat here soon because when i bend the string it puts tension on the bridge and drops the pitch, stupid springs they get us all. good luck
I bought an Ibanez years ago…loved the neck, loved the body shape, loved the weight of the instrument…HATED the Floyd Rose. You can’t really lock it down, however I use a wooden block to get the bridge to stay in place. There is a way to lock it down without haveing to do anything permanant and without having to use the 5 springs to tighten the FR down. Before you start all of this - take off the lock nuts at the top of the neck.
Usually you can go to a craft store, or a flower shop and buy 1/2" wooden blocks (they’re small rectangular blocks that are 1/2 inch square and laround 2" long) - they usually come in small packages of 4 or more.
(from now on picture the guitar on a table, with the neck pointing away from you and the body closest to you)
Flip the guitar over and take off the back plate. At the bottom of the cavity, place one of those blocks between the metal temolo piece and the bottom wall of the cavity. Then unscrew the spring screws at the top of the cavity enough so that the metal piece moves down and holds the wooden block in place.
Flip your guitar back over and tune away - at this point, the block in the back of the guitar will keep the bridge from moving or ‘floating’ forward. Replace the lock nuts when finished but don’t lock em down, I have them on there for looks (loosened enough for me to use the tuners on the headstock to actually tune the guitar).
I generally agree with the “when in doubt, don’t sweat the whammy” mindset - very, very few people use them in an interesting way, and the more you can force yourself to learn to use fewer gimmicks and get the sound out of your hands, the better.
To lock up a whammy - take it to a guitar tech and have them do it. Why? Because you should probably get your compensation checked (i.e., bridge pieces that adjust string length for maximum stay-in-tunage), you may need to do something about your locking nut, and, maybe even about your neck tension. Further, if you are going the way of locking your whammy, may I strongly suggest upping your string gauge? Most folks play with 9’s (i.e., use a string set with .009 on the high E string), but you can get a MUCH BETTER TONE the heavier you go gauge-wise. Stevie Ray played with 13’s (i.e., bridge cables). I have moved up to 11’s and my tone is much better, and I am able to do most of the bending I did with 9’s. The point is, if you move up on your string gauge, you definitely need to adjust compensation and neck tension…
As the previous poster said, your choice of strings can make a big difference. I normally use D’Addario custom lights, but on one occasion the store was out. I settled on a heavier set, and when I put them on later found that the bridge was pulled way out and I needed to adjust the springs.
I agree that the “wammy bar” is a silly thing, especially with the faces you’re forced to make when using it. However, I can’t imagine going without the lock on the bridge. With this in place my strings stay in tune almost forever, and when they do go out, the fine adjustment at the bridge lets me tune more quickly and precisely.
I play with 11’s right now. Ernie Ball Heavy bottoms light tops. I have found no use for my whammy bar. The days of 80’s style dive bomb solos is gone. The light tremelo that I need to do can be done with a bend or a “jiggle” of the finger.
I regret the day I passed up that PRS just because it had no tremelo.
mellonhead described the process really well. Also, I read a suggestion to use a piece of hardwood to improve the tone, but I haven’t tried it.
And I have to 2nd (3rd?) the regret of buying an Ibanez + Floyd Rose as my first guitar. Who needs to dive-bomb when you are learning Polly Wolly Doodle?
A while back someone manufactured a locking device called either “trem-set” or “trem-lock.” It created some kind of detent at the neutral position on the whammy (neither flatted nor sharped). The idea was that with a little bit of force you could overcome the detent and wank away to your heart’s content. It installed in the body cavity next to the whammy. WAG is that a bit of extra routing is required. Unless you’re playing a vintage instrument, that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.
I remeber when we first started importing and distributing Floyd-Rose trems which were suppose to be the greatest thing.
Compared to other makes, the metal was cheap electrocast stuff and the knife edges were soft compared to other makes, and you couldn’t lock them down unlike say Kahler trems.
To be honest I didn’t think much of them, the music industry seems to have reputations built upon recieved opinion rather than having the musos actually look at how things work and decide for themselves.
Everyone in the music industry, or at least lots of musos think of themselves as being creative things but are extremely conservative when it comes to equipment, preferring to listen to others who are as ignorant electrically and mechanically as themselves.
If you think that the Floyd-Rose trem isn’t working for you in the way you want, don’t listen to others, change it and get something that will do what you want.
I purchased a used Jackson that had a very interesting blocking mechanism for the Floyd; I’ll post some pics later tonight (when I’m not at work…). It won’t allow the bar to be pulled up, but you can push it down as you would a top-mounted Floyd or vintage Finder-style trem. I also use four springs, which gives it a really solid feel, especially when string bending.
Compared to other tremolo systems, I think the Original Floyd Rose (not ‘Licensed’ copies like the Ibanez Edge and others, though the Edge is one of the best of the copies) provides the best tuning stability out of all tremolos on the market. Like the Edge there are a few copies that are said to be pretty good (i.e. Schaller in Germany have made their own versions, like the JT-590 that was used on some Jackson models in late 80s/early 90s).When you lock both ends of the string, it’s hard to get more stable. I realize that Floyd Roses are pretty much relics of the 1980s, but as far as tremolo systems go, there have been few as popular and successful in their goal.
casdave, that may have been true, but today’s Original Floyd Rose, made by Schaller, is a hefty piece of hardened stainless steel. You could probably drop a bomb on it and it would survive without a scratch.
Chrome Spot, the device you’re referring to is the Tremsetter, made by Hipshot (others may have made copies, but it’s the only one I know about). It requires a couple of screws, but no other major modifications. Stewart-MacDonald (www.stewmac.com) carries them, as do other suppliers (I imagine) like AllParts.
I happen to love a whammy bar in the hands that know how to use them. I don’t have a guitar with one but I used to when I was a teenager in the 1980’s with my Ibanez RG550…I never learned how to use it properly but it never “went out of tune” when I WASN’T using it, whether I was bending notes or whatever. FFS, when you bend hard and often enough just with your fingers on a guitar without a whammy, your G, B and high E strings will eventually need to be tuned again at some point. One thing I did like about the locking tremolo was the fine tuners. It was nice to be able to just tune the guitar that way rather than unlocking, tuning with the pegs, then re-locking (which you still had to do from time to time as the fine tuners ran out of room).
I have tastes that many don’t like. I LOVE the extreme techniques used by guys like Vai, Satriani and EVH with locking trems. However, the guitarist I most admire for tasteful usage of this device is Gilmour with his simple Strat tremolo arm. His whammy work is very subtle and adds a great deal of emotion to his playing and solos, so I don’t get the hate when I listen to him. He’s a master at it.
I guess is depends upon whether you want the bar to be floating or only allow for dropping. The special lockers I remember allowed you to lock in place a floating setup, which is more flexible than just adding a spring or two. Never bothered to look into it much. I once had a Khaler whammy bar. Amazing thing, and I think there was a locking version of that as well. But some sleazebag stole the guitar, and that was the end of that.
good luck