Ultimate Rhoads

I m thinking of making my fender strat bridge into a floating one by taking a bit of the out beneath it so it floats. Would you suggest a locking nut for this or would locking tuners and a graph tech nut be fine for tuning of this

I'd go with the locking tuners myself, unless you like the look of the locking nut.

When I bought my Gretsch G5120, it came with a Bigsby trem. I started reading some of the forums dedicated to Gretsch guitars and found that a number of players had put locking tuners on then and had great results.

if I have read your post right you won't be able to use locking nuts because once you clamp then down you can't fine tune the strings.......most people who "float" a strat trem have it so that the bridge is angled up like on this page http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_strat.html (just over 1/3rd the way down the page)

what's wrong with the original trem?

why do you need to fine tune? shouldn't the strings stay in tune with the lock? Id like to have the raising option as well as diving and i already have it like in the link but it doesn't work to well for me.

Locking tuners help as well as greasing the nut or switching it out to a graph tech nut. Getting a clamp will hinder you more than anything as the guitar more than likely go out of tune when you clamp it and you will have no way to tune it further. I find that if you don't want your guitar to go out of tune get a Floyd Rose. Every trem I have ever tried that was not double locking has gone out of tune. How the pros get theirs to stay in tune I don't know. I have tried it all and and numerous guitars and numerous manufactures and they all have gone out of tune. Some more than others. PRS was one of the better manufacturers.

Good luck on your quest.

BowTie29 wrote:why do you need to fine tune? shouldn't the strings stay in tune with the lock?

when you clamp them down they go slightly sharp again from the pressure.....

why not just by a floyd for your strat and rout out a little for pull ups

thats what I'm doing but instead of getting a floyd I'm just keeping my trem as the bridge, ill just rout out a little bit for the pull up

BowTie29 wrote:thats what I'm doing but instead of getting a floyd I'm just keeping my trem as the bridge, ill just rout out a little bit for the pull up

but if you are having problems with tuning now when you pull up it won't get any better if you rout out wood. Locking tuners will stabilise the strings but it won't help with sticking at the nut which is where most tuning problems stem from......

actually with the routing thing, just make sure there is enough room in the trem cavity where the springs are to be able to pull back on the arm. I know with my malmsteen strat there isn't a lot of space between the trem block and the wood to pull up

BowTie29 wrote:I m thinking of making my fender strat bridge into a floating one by taking a bit of the out beneath it so it floats.

I've got 2 videos for you to look at before making any mods to your guitar. I tried them out and they do work...

This one is for getting a stock Strat to stay in tune perfectly while using the bar. It's really quite cool.

This is for setting up a two pin Strat bridge to float.

Thanks

Paul Wolfe wrote:I've got 2 videos for you to look at before making any mods to your guitar. I tried them out and they do work...

This one is for getting a stock Strat to stay in tune perfectly while using the bar. It's really quite cool.

This is for setting up a two pin Strat bridge to float.

BowTie29 wrote:Thanks

Let me know if you try these ideas out and how they work for you if you do, I'm curious to hear your point of view.

A little off topic, but Randy had standard Strat tailpieces on his guitars and was quoted as saying his tech had them set up so they stayed in tune... maybe this was how he did it?