Tremolo Tension: The Secret to a Great Strat

Andy Eagle said:
If you find an old picture of EJ with Virginia (the real one) it had a brass saddle on the high E
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Seems like he changes stuff up over time, he's kinda the king of that. That's what the Virgina is supposed to be, the end result of decades of little tweaks. If I could just swap mine for a new Virginia, I'd probably do it, but I can't swing the out of pocket cost.
 
GlennO said:
I'm curious and just thinking out loud, but, for a floating bridge, is that right? The tension on the strings is determined by the pitch, string gauge, and scale. That tension is a constant and will never change. The total spring tension for a floating bridge must necessarily be exactly that same tension in the opposite direction, otherwise your pitch would be wrong. That means the total spring tension can never change, right? If so, then you have no choice in the matter for a floating bridge. The tension will always be the same.
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Yes, I'm talking about standard strat bridge. Yes, adjusting the trem tension changes the pitch and requires re-tuning.

The point I'm making is that the guitar sounds and feels different even after re-tuning and adjusting saddle heights (as @chrisxs2003 rightfully pointed out). I also found that continuing to tighten the springs still made a difference even after the bridge was flat against the body and that variable was no longer in play.
 
Andy Eagle said:
I agree with EJ on the back plate off thing but he's not claiming anything more than what I've stated here.
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For the record, EJ has his tremolos tightened down because he believes it sounds better that way. [Edit: We have a first-hand source on this thread saying that he did it for the tuning, not the tone.]
My strat is an EJ thinline, which came from the factory with the trem tightened down. I loosened it up because I wanted to use the trem, was disappointed with the change in tone, and decided to put it back. In the process of putting it back, I found out that it matters exactly how much you tighten those screws, even after the bridge is flush against the body.


Bakerman said:
Technically it's equal moments a.k.a. torque (springs applying less tension at a greater distance from the fulcrum, for most vibrato bridge styles anyway) but this detail usually gets skipped over and you have the right idea.

Note that you can change the number of springs or their stiffness (by swapping) to let a floating bridge move more or less during bends. Bar use would also require less/more force. This won't change the actual string tension and doesn't really affect the feel of normal fretting & picking.
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Here's the thing: if string bends are affected, then this does affect the feel and the tone. If it's easier to bend, it's also easier to do vibrato and the strings will feel slinkier under your fingers. It affects how stiff the string is when you play it with a pick. If the reacts differently to the pick, it will sound different too.
 
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giantslayer said:
Yes, I'm talking about standard strat bridge. Yes, adjusting the trem tension changes the pitch and requires re-tuning.
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With all due respect, that’s not physically possible. You cannot change the spring tension on a floating bridge while keeping the same pitch. See the various posts above that explain this.
 
GlennO said:
With all due respect, that’s not physically possible. You cannot change the spring tension on a floating bridge while keeping the same pitch. See the various posts above that explain this.
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I am pretty sure we're in agreement on this. Changing the spring tension throws the guitar out of tune.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
After years of using 4 springs with 9-46 strings and a floating setup, I switched to 3 springs and adjusted the claw tighter to compensate. The bar feel is much lighter now, and string bends feel a little easier - probably due to needing to push them a bit further to make the target pitch because the resistance to bridge movement is lower. The tone seems to have less fundamental and comes out a little more delicate and 'Stratty'....
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That sounds about the same as what I experienced by loosening the claw. Removing a spring would take quite a bit off the tension. I didn't really explore into the difference between adjusting the claw and the number of springs, so this intrigues me.

When you tightened the claw to compensate, how did you figure out how much to tighten it?
 
giantslayer said:
Yes, I'm talking about standard strat bridge. Yes, adjusting the trem tension changes the pitch and requires re-tuning.

The point I'm making is that the guitar sounds and feels different even after re-tuning and adjusting saddle heights (as @chrisxs2003 rightfully pointed out). I also found that continuing to tighten the springs still made a difference even after the bridge was flat against the body and that variable was no longer in play.
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Changes the tension on the springs, and the resonant frequencies that they sing along with. That vibration will communicate with the strings through the bridge block similar to how the 'sproinky' sound of plucking strings behind the nut is communicated over the nut and into the playable part of the strings that the pickups listen to. The trem springs also are picked up by the pickups themselves to a small extent. The big part of that variable is out of play, but the smaller parts are all still active in the equation....

:) For something so simple, there are a lot of details and complications to it.... :)
 
giantslayer said:
That sounds about the same as what I experienced by loosening the claw. Removing a spring would take quite a bit off the tension. I didn't really explore into the difference between adjusting the claw and the number of springs, so this intrigues me.

When you tightened the claw to compensate, how did you figure out how much to tighten it?
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Trial and error, until I could pull up around a minor third on the G string and the tension was right to balance the strings tuned to Eb....
 
giantslayer said:
It affects how stiff the string is when you play it with a pick.
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It affects it, but probably not very much in most cases.

A floating setup that drops about 10 cents* requires about 99% of the deflection force of a fixed bridge (or dive-only setup that doesn't move in this example). That's when you actually deflect the string enough to drop the pitch 10 cents. A 5-cent drop would be around 99.5% of the fixed-bridge deflection force, etc.

*Of course the strings don't all change pitch at the same rate when you use the bar. Still, if you know some pairs change at roughly the same rate, you can get a reasonably accurate value for your own floating setup by deflecting one as if about to pick, and checking how much the other drops.
 
I put some foam under the springs of the trem to reduce their resonance noise. When a trem is tightend down, I check the adjusted tension of the claw by pulling a maximum bend of one string. If the trem lifts from the body, I need more tension on the springs to get the whole benefit of tightend down trem.
 
giantslayer said:
For the record, EJ has his tremolos tightened down because he believes it sounds better that way. My strat is an EJ thinline, which came from the factory with the trem tightened down. I loosened it up because I wanted to use the trem, was disappointed with the change in tone, and decided to put it back. In the process of putting it back, I found out that it matters exactly how much you tighten those screws, even after the bridge is flush against the body.
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He told me that was to stay in tune if he broke a string primarily .
Yes acoustically the difference is obvious but many of the absolute classic tones on record are floating.
 
Andy Eagle said:
He told me that was to stay in tune if he broke a string primarily .
Yes acoustically the difference is obvious but many of the absolute classic tones on record are floating.
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I stand corrected. Thank you for sharing valuable first-hand info. :)


I just noticed in a video that he uses 4 springs on his tremolo (the second from the end on the treble side is removed). Mine came with all 5 connected. I don't want to take the time to fine-tune the tremolo tension again, but I'm awfully curious about how it would sound...
 
giantslayer said:
I stand corrected. Thank you for sharing valuable first-hand info. :)


I just noticed in a video that he uses 4 springs on his tremolo (the second from the end on the treble side is removed). Mine came with all 5 connected. I don't want to take the time to fine-tune the tremolo tension again, but I'm awfully curious about how it would sound...
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5 springs? Bar must be stiff....
 
I like all 5 springs or 3 heavy tension springs on a Strat so that I can do double-stops. When the tension is slack, you can do cool bends but limits you in other ways.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Trial and error, until I could pull up around a minor third on the G string and the tension was right to balance the strings tuned to Eb....
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Am I correct in assuming that you had previously set it up the same way back when it had 4 springs? There might be a lot more to the springs than I had thought...
 
giantslayer said:
Am I correct in assuming that you had previously set it up the same way back when it had 4 springs? There might be a lot more to the springs than I had thought...
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Yes. I noted the bar was a bit more compliant and more conducive to gently shimmering vibrato in my PRS SE24 Standard, which came with 3 springs, so I pulled one and re-balanced it all in my Strat to get the feel to be similar....
 
So how does one set up a Strat tremolo to stay in tune when it’s floating?

I have an American Professional Strat and its tremolo was floating when it was new. It constantly went out of tune. This drove me crazy and the tremolo was absolutely unusable. I just ended up decking it.

As an experiment, I replaced the stamped steel saddles with the new Wilkinson Locking Saddles (as seen on the Suhr Pete Thorn signature guitar). There was no real improvement in my Strat’s tremolo stability.
 
pharmd07 said:
So how does one set up a Strat tremolo to stay in tune when it’s floating?

I have an American Professional Strat and its tremolo was floating when it was new. It constantly went out of tune. This drove me crazy and the tremolo was absolutely unusable. I just ended up decking it.

As an experiment, I replaced the stamped steel saddles with the new Wilkinson Locking Saddles (as seen on the Suhr Pete Thorn signature guitar). There was no real improvement in my Strat’s tremolo stability.
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If the locking saddles didn't help, your problem is the nut or the tuners storing slack when the tension changes. I wish I could find one more set of those saddles. My Strat needs them.... :)
 
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