Slight vibrato from "bending" the guitar?

[dave74]

All my guitars have floating double-locking trems,,,,,,,so I've never even wanted to try this lol.

[Erlend_G]

^^ Yeah, naturally a floating tremolo, would counteract this effect .

I'm never going past... well 100 cents is a half note? So... 25 cents in either direction.

Some strings do more "pitch bending" than others.

I just love that my guitar sounds so alive. .

-Erlend

[Francois]

Not slight, but big vibrato from "bending" the guitar... I did it long ago but I won't do it again !
The guitarist of Cosmic Wurst told it sounded great and won't harm the guitar. So I did it live in the eraly 90s : You play a E chord at the bottom, hold firmly the neck and press with force with other hand on the body quite close to the neck. It sounds like a whammy/trem on a hard tail guitar going down half a tone at least. The visual effect is also great on stage, really wild. Then I played told school hardcore evolving into post hardcore.l did it exclusively with an S-1 (Gibson but bolded neck).

BUT I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING THIS ! Now I am pretty sure this not so good for the guitar (neck, truss rod, bolds). I stopped doing this decades ago and won't do it again.

[Francois]

Pete Townshend used to do it all the time when he played SG's. He did it at Woodstock, and I've seen old vids of The Who on TV shows when he was doing it. .

Pete Townshend was right to do it, knowing he would soon smash the guitar no need to worry about slightly warping the neck

[piblock]

Pete Townshend used to do it all the time when he played SG's. He did it at Woodstock, and I've seen old vids of The Who on TV shows when he was doing it. Stanley Clarke used to get some great vibrato from his Alembic basses by striking a couple harmonics, grasping the upper horn of the body and swinging the body back and forth in a slow arc speeding up as the sounds decayed. It was showmanship of the best kind, and sounded great to the audience. He did it several times when he played SNL (Cheap Trick were the musical hosts one night - fantastic night of music). And I've seen him doing it with Chick Corea and during live sets with his very under rated rock band Animal Logic (3 great albums w/ Stewart Copeland and singer/songwriter Deborah Holland).

I have an SG (Gibson) and there's no way in hell I would do that. Maybe on a cheap/ bolt on neck guitar. A friend of mine snapped the neck doing the same thing on a nice classical / nylon string Yamaha. It was a sad moment!

[piblock]

Just look at any tree in high wind. Any branch of roughly enough size to get a neck out of moves and flexes by many degrees greater than the trifling amounts for a 1/2 or 1 step pitch shift.
People just seem to walk on eggshells around materials without thinking about the real world evidence you already know about if you just thought about it.

Does the tree's headstock snap off?

[GuitarDoc]

Originally posted by AlexR View Post
"Just look at any tree in high wind. Any branch of roughly enough size to get a neck out of moves and flexes by many degrees greater than the trifling amounts for a 1/2 or 1 step pitch shift."

Certainly we all know that. But it doesn't really apply, does it. When a tree is alive it is very flexible. When it is dead (as in the wood of a neck) it become stiff, hard, and brittle. Try snapping a live twig over your knee...it just bends. Try snapping a dead twig over your knee...it breaks like a pretzel.

[nexion218]

Originally posted by AlexR View Post
"Just look at any tree in high wind. Any branch of roughly enough size to get a neck out of moves and flexes by many degrees greater than the trifling amounts for a 1/2 or 1 step pitch shift."

Certainly we all know that. But it doesn't really apply, does it. When a tree is alive it is very flexible. When it is dead (as in the wood of a neck) it become stiff, hard, and brittle. Try snapping a live twig over your knee...it just bends. Try snapping a dead twig over your knee...it breaks like a pretzel.

Not to to mention that a "branch roughly enough size to get a neck out of" is at least twice the amount of wood than the nevk made of it and doesn't miss the amount removed for truss rod and maybe graphite rods. But the main thing nullifying that argument is what Doc said. I was just lazy to type when I first saw it.

Anyways, I guess this is like trussrod adjustments. Some people are terrified to touch it citing horrorstories and I really don' t tnderstand why. Don't overdo it and it's fine. I feel the same about bending the neck. I am terrified of doing it and some people laugh at me for being a wuss. The only minor difference I see is that trussrod adjusment is an intended function and I'm not sure if the same is true about neckbending.

[ICTGoober]

Pete Townshend was right to do it, knowing he would soon smash the guitar no need to worry about slightly warping the neck

Playing the guitar will NOT warp the neck. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what a warped neck looks like or how it got that way. All you nervous nellies should just give up guitar if you're afraid to fricking well PLAY THE DAMN THING. Take up playing the kazoo. CEE-RIMINY!

[ehdwuld]

Went to play a friend Squire Strat
he didn't have the bar for the trem

At the end of the jam
I warped the neck and pulled up on the bridge

Warping the bridge returned to tune much better

The last part rendered it in need of tuning bad