How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

[Cron]

Hi,

I own one fixed bridge guitar and for my custom project I already have an LR Baggs trem. The guitar i'm building will be closer to a les paul but i really want the piezo's in the trem + i already have the trem.

I've played strats and les pauls but could never tell as the woods these guitars use are so different.

How much warmth or fattness or tone (I know all these terms are relative) do you lose by taking out extra wood for a trem?

How would it affect the sound otherwise...brightness etc.

I want to use the trem as long as i dont lose too much chunk or whatever you want to call it.

Thanx

 

[RCM78]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

If you dont use a locking nut it's not bad at all. Also if the bridge doesnt float it's even better.

The loss of sustain and tone comes in when the strings are disconnected from the guitar. Perfect example is a floating Floyd Rose style bridge with locking nut.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

All of my guitars save one have a Floyd Rose trem, and I can honestly say that I don't notice any difference in sustain, one way or the other, comparing my hard tail to my trem guitars.

 

[aleclee]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

Based on my experience playing trem and stoptail PRS guitars with identical woods, scale, pickups, etc., I don't find there to be a huge difference.

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

Badly set up, cheap pot metal hardware will suck tone. A good quality bridge with a proper setup will sound just as good as a hardtail. :burnout:

 

[mrfjones]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

i woulond't say i notice a loss of tone, but a change in tone. my tele for example sounds more woody than my strat, and i have that trem blocked. The strat has a more metalic tone and was my reason for changing the pickups to alnico 2 magnet equiped antiquities.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

i wouldn't say I notice a loss of tone, but a change in tone. My tele for example sounds more woody than my strat, and i have that trem blocked. The strat has a more metalic tone and was my reason for changing the pickups to alnico 2 magnet equiped antiquities.

Exactly. That's the diff right there.

The Strat has a more metallic or steely tone and the Tele has a woodier and twangier tone with more snap, IMO.

I think a hardtail Strat has a woodier and less metallic tone than a Strat with a vintage style vibrato. It's not the same tone as a Tele tho because the bridge and pickup are connected in a Tele.

The Strat with the vibrato still gets a deep tone...it's just steelier. So I wouldn't say the tone is impaired...just differant as mrfjones said.

Zerb was saying the diff is due alot to the springs vibrating but I'm not so sure that's the big diff. I think it's the strings passing through the vibrato block and everything being connected together the way it is in a Strat that makes them sound the way they do.

And as mentioned in another thread, alot of guys (Eric Clapton most notably) prefer the tone of a Strat with a vibrato even though he never uses it and keeps it blocked. So do I.

I think a Bigsby on a 335 makes the guitar sound alot spongier and weaker than a 335 with a Les Paul style stop tailpiece. Never liked Bigsby vibratos.

 

[Cron]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

Thanx for the replies.

I don't think i will really use the trem for what its made for so i'll block it.

I understand all that about woody and steely.

The trem is going into a maple capped mahogany body with mahogany neck. I really love that les paul chunk on high gain sounds. I guess what i mean is: would i get any less "chunk" because of the trem and all the wood that is taken out because of it?

 

[philthis]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

when I worked at the guitar store me and the other guys constantly tried differant things on guitars to see the effect on tone. we found that with a floyd rose trem you need a medium output pickup becouse the floyd rose trem made a normal vintage pickup that sounded great in a strat with a vintage trem-sound weak-thin-trebley-and had loss of volumn. however this was solved by useing a medium output pickup wich then sounded as full as a vintage pickup on a vintage trem strat. it was also our oppinion that medium and high output pickups on a vintage trem strat seemed to overpower the tone of the guitar to where the whole sound was only the pickup and the natural wood tones were lost.
as a rule of thumb we decided that-on floye rose trem equiped guitars we would use and recomend to customers medium to high output pickups.
on vintage trem strats we recomend vintage pickups so the pickup would not overpower the tone of the guitar wood.
oddley enough we found kids who liked the paticular sound of a pickup only-got that sound easier by shuving it in a vintage trem strat cuz the pickup would easily overpower the guitars overtones so you had basicaly only the sound of that pickup coming thru the amp and nothing else. example-lovers of punk usually liked a duncan invader in the bridge of a vintage trem or hard tail equiped strat cuz that pickup really had strong tone in that setup with a high gain amp such as a marshall or boogie rectifyer. :beerchug:

 

[Archer_of_Fish]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

I put Graphtec saddles on my strat and it REALLY warmed the tone up.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

when I worked at the guitar store me and the other guys constantly tried differant things on guitars to see the effect on tone. we found that with a floyd rose trem you need a medium output pickup becouse the floyd rose trem made a normal vintage pickup that sounded great in a strat with a vintage trem-sound weak-thin-trebley-and had loss of volumn. however this was solved by useing a medium output pickup wich then sounded as full as a vintage pickup on a vintage trem strat.

This was pretty much my experience with the Floyd guitar I owned and why I said what I did on this thread: https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=23781

 

[RCM78]

Re: How much "tone" does a trem really suck out?

when I worked at the guitar store me and the other guys constantly tried differant things on guitars to see the effect on tone. we found that with a floyd rose trem you need a medium output pickup becouse the floyd rose trem made a normal vintage pickup that sounded great in a strat with a vintage trem-sound weak-thin-trebley-and had loss of volumn. however this was solved by useing a medium output pickup wich then sounded as full as a vintage pickup on a vintage trem strat. it was also our oppinion that medium and high output pickups on a vintage trem strat seemed to overpower the tone of the guitar to where the whole sound was only the pickup and the natural wood tones were lost.
as a rule of thumb we decided that-on floye rose trem equiped guitars we would use and recomend to customers medium to high output pickups.
on vintage trem strats we recomend vintage pickups so the pickup would not overpower the tone of the guitar wood.
oddley enough we found kids who liked the paticular sound of a pickup only-got that sound easier by shuving it in a vintage trem strat cuz the pickup would easily overpower the guitars overtones so you had basicaly only the sound of that pickup coming thru the amp and nothing else. example-lovers of punk usually liked a duncan invader in the bridge of a vintage trem or hard tail equiped strat cuz that pickup really had strong tone in that setup with a high gain amp such as a marshall or boogie rectifyer. :beerchug:

This make alot of sense. Never really thought about it but all my Floyd equipped guitars have medium to high output pups.

Another thing that helps bring out the sound of the wood is mounting the pickups directly to the body... Since the strings are isolated at the bridge and nut, the pickup has a direct connection.