Help - have my bridge springs lost their sproing?!

unix-guy said:
For what it's worth, that bridge still looks like it's angled too far forward to me.

Standard setup would have the baseplate parallel to the top of the guitar body.

Also, another thing to mention is that aside from tightening the claw, you can also gradually detune all the strings. The tension will "re-balance" and the trem will lower and the pitch will go up as you work thru them - it's an interesting balancing act :)

What I suspect may have happened was based on you taking all the strings off.

If you then put on strings one at a time and tuned to pitch this tilt change can happen.

That's one reason to change strings one at a time OR shim/block the bridge if you're going to do all of them.
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Note that picture 1 is before, picture 2 is after....it is MUCH flatter to the body, although not flat as you suggest.

I will look again (will be tomorrow again, sadly, as have another 200 emails to clear tonight #living the dream) - your point about snipping all the strings at once causing this is the likely culprit. I didn't have any snips before so unwound them all gradually and took them off manually. Lesson learned.
 
Gilesy said:
Note that picture 1 is before, picture 2 is after....it is MUCH flatter to the body, although not flat as you suggest.

I will look again (will be tomorrow again, sadly, as have another 200 emails to clear tonight #living the dream) - your point about snipping all the strings at once causing this is the likely culprit. I didn't have any snips before so unwound them all gradually and took them off manually. Lesson learned.
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Ok, I didn't realize... The 2nd looks much better.
 
It’s not unusual to see a little forward tilt on a Strat-style bridge. It’s a way to keep the fulcrum in contact with the body, and still allow the whammy to be pulled up a bit.
 
unix-guy said:
If you then put on strings one at a time and tuned to pitch this tilt change can happen.

That's one reason to change strings one at a time OR shim/block the bridge if you're going to do all of them.
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Not really. The strings end up at the same tension either way, and the spring constants won't change from the springs being slightly less stretched out for a while. (At least, they shouldn't--if they did, the same thing would happen after pulling up and holding the bar for a while. That would only happen if they're starting to fail from stress.)
 
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unix-guy said:
Standard setup would have the baseplate parallel to the top of the guitar body.
Click to expand...
Fender's setup guide suggests a 1/8" gap at the back of the bridge with the front of the plate resting on the top of the body. I personally prefer the baseplate to be parallel on all trems and have found it to be a more stable setup in both operation and tuning.
 
JoKeR III said:
Fender's setup guide suggests a 1/8" gap at the back of the bridge with the front of the plate resting on the top of the body. I personally prefer the baseplate to be parallel on all trems and have found it to be a more stable setup in both operation and tuning.
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Me, too. The whammy spends most of its time in the neutral position, and the knife edges are strongest when the force is directly into them. If you want room to pull up, you can usually raise the whole bridge, and make up the difference with saddle height.
 
If you don't use the trem put in five springs. For down bend only start with three and adjust the spring tension so you can bed the G up a tone without the trem lifting at the back. Any more tension that this will make it hard to use with any subtlety. If you float it adjust it so the back has enough room to pull up the pitch of the G about a tone this will be around 3~5mm .
 
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