Quote:
Originally Posted by ragser
I came by this comment on justinguitar:
"DON'T BUY AN ELECTRIC WITH A FLOATING TREMELO WHEN YOU START OUT.
They are a total pain in the butt, very hard to tune and a real pain to change strings. The cheaper ones go out of tune a lot too. If you spend more, and know why you want one, then fine, but locking tremelos on budget instruments are usually rubbish."
My question is. What is a floating tremolo? I never heard it.
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The wikipedia entry will tell you what you need to know. But just in case, here's some other input.
First of all, a generic tremelo bridge is one where you have a 'whammy bar' attached to it so you can detune the strings, up or down in pitch. A noticeable trick you've heard is called a 'divebomb' from Eddie Van Halen, who generally made the Floyd Rose popular in the beginning.
You probably already have enough info now to get the difference between a floating trem and a fixed trem.
But let me tell you about the
PRS trem, a floating trem. It's similar to other fulcrum/knife edge trems like the Rose. Maybe they're similar.
Imagine the bridge assemblies of the axe sitting and attached on a thin blade of metal called a knife edge so the bridge can rock back and forth. On the tailpiece side of the bridge, four strong springs are attached. The other ends of them are anchored in a hollowed out cavity in the back of the body of the axe. The springs are pulling on the bridge down and in the direction of the neck.
So, tension is needed to pull the bridge so it sits level. When a PRS guitar is strung to tune, the strings provide the balanced tension. The idea is to have a balanced bridge. There's a complete set-up procedure for this, naturally.
So you can take the 'whammy bar' and do divebombs or raise the pitch of each string.
Get the idea?
The deal is that the quality of tremelos are generally bad unless it's a half-way pricey one. And if a person's just starting out, it's not very good for ear training for a guitar to be going out of tune all the time.
Steve