I’m curious if any of you Strat players have ever tried Carl Verheyen’s system for setting up the whammy bar? When I had my son’s Strat in the shop for a little work the luthier set his up utilizing that system and it really seems to work.
I’m curious if any of you Strat players have ever tried Carl Verheyen’s system for setting up the whammy bar? When I had my son’s Strat in the shop for a little work the luthier set his up utilizing that system and it really seems to work.
verrrrry interesting. I've got a Strat that I'm about to put back together after replacing the trem bridge and I want it to float.
I know he says he uses 3 springs, but I wonder if it can work with 5. For some OCD reason, I want a full complement of springs in there.
"Live and learn and flip the burns"
With five springs there may be too much spring pressure to achieve the balanced float vs string tension.Originally Posted by DanTheBluesMan
Bookmarked to watch at some point in the future. I have a way of doing strat terms, but if I can learn something new, I will. I also must have 5 springs. I find that it increases the resistance & keeps notes from going flat when bending strings
|I'll watch that later when I get a chance.
You can balance then tension with any number of springs; it just comes to how far in or out you screw the spring claw. I've balanced with 5 (on a set of .010s,) down to 2. One doesn't work with those, but may with extra extra lights - but why try that.
I keep my Strat so I have one step upward pull, and I keep 4 springs in there. I like the tension it gives with that, and I feel that I can still bend without the rest going too far out.
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"Do you call sleeping with a guitar in your hands practicing?"
"It is if you don't drop it."
- Trent Lane, Daria, Episode 1-2.
He clearly gets good results, but it's not because he angles the claw. Angling the claw has no affect on the tension and up-pull interval on individual strings. That would require the bridge to be flexible or to pivot on an axis that it can't.
That was cool. I don't think I'll be trying that angled claw setup, as I don't play like that, but DANG- the guy can make it sing!
What I found that works well isn’t always an angled claw, but could result in one.
First make sure all your springs exert about the same tension. Once done, put in the amount (most possible), for your string gauge. Make sure at a neutral bridge all the springs have a distance between the coils. Now make sure the gap between the coils is equal by adjusting claw in/out. Now make sure if floated, and you raise the pitch, there is still a gap in the coils and full raise.
Mark
You lads are missing the point here. My kid’s Strat was set up with this system and it does work quite well. As an experiment, give it a try some afternoon when you have nothing else to do. If you haven’t watched it, watch the video. Carl pulls some great sound out of his Strat.
Without giving it too much thought, I think your right Don...
Correctamundo.
If you leave one spring longer than the other on a Strat it can fall out when you lift on the bar since the springs rely on a certain amount of tension to stay seated in the block. That's also why you always want the springs parallel and not have the outer ones angled as I found in some guitars.
"No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim
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