Re: How To: set a stratocaster bridge to float
Hi Carl - it's certainly an honor to have you here, and I mean no disrespect in my criticisms of your tutorial. No doubt you have helped and continue to help guide countless musicians in their quest to improve their playing, and in fine tuning their setups to allow exploration in to corners of their guitar's palette they may never have considered.
To be clear and fair, a player's motivation in understanding how to adjust their setup is typically centered on the end results, and whatever method gets them there is rightfully considered success. As a technician, one must inevitably focus on understanding the underlying reasons of how and why setups respond the way they do to different adjustments. Combined with experience and attentiveness, this knowledge is critical to troubleshooting and fine tuning setups to the wide variety of players needs with any control or predictability.
With that in mind, I take no issue at all with your methods of setup here, as it does indeed lead to the results you have shown on a conventional Strat bridge. Still, as to the reasoning behind them I have to say this -
The ratio which one string increases in pitch relative to others is not independently controllable. Aside from string gauge and tension, it comes down to a factor of where the peak of the saddle sits relative to the fulcrum point, and can not be individually fine tuned without making saddle adjustments which would compromise the setup and intonation. It is fortuitous that they happen to work out this same way on almost all conventional Strat setups, but it is just that - luck rather than controlled setup.
And secondly, while you may seem to notice a change in the way it responds when you adjust the trem claw to an angle, in the end it is only the net force of the springs that determines how it works. If you were to set up your guitar in the manner described in the video, then without touching the tuners re-adjust the trem claw to straight, or even at the opposite angle, being sure to maintain the same sum tension by bringing it back in to tune by adjusting the claw, then you will find the exact same changes in pitch as previously.
So the strings change pitch and tension here as a direct result of displacement. So long as the force of the springs is centered anywhere between the outer bridge posts (so as not to cause the bridge plate to lift away from posts on one side when using the trem) then that displacement will remain unchanged. It works out just fine any way you do it here, but in the end it is only the sum of force from the springs and not significantly dependent on the force being balanced or greater on one side or the other. Make sense?
Thanks again for coming by, and much thanks for your inspiration and influence of many players. I have to say that in spite of my disagreement with the reasoning behind why a setup works the way it does, I watched that video several times over in awe of the sounds you are able to coax out of a guitar like that.
