Lowering Floyd Rose nut

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Sharpening the knife edges would be difficult and imprecise, and I don't think that's the problem in the first place. In such a small space, how am I going to be sure the angle of the edge is proper, and that the bridge won't tilt once it is reseated against the posts?

Since you are about to waste this bridge why not give it a try? And since you think knife edges is not the problem, what else could it be? Any other theories besides the softness argument? (my edge zero ii is soft - not as in "garbage pot metal" soft but still soft and light, yet it gives better stability than my floyds).

Take a look here : http://www.ibanezrules.com/tech/setup/fat_knives.htm and http://www.ibanezrules.com/tech/setup/sharpening.htm

As far as the analogy about Leonidas and Constantine, I can assure you the modern greek mentality is of the type : start randomly changing everything until they solve the problem (or break the bank whatever happens first). The philosophy you western guys taught me is to nail the problem at its very heart. Take it as an opportunity to start learning and work with woods and metals. What Dr New said is valid : try to drill for the inserts by hand, but first practice a lot on blank wood. If you over-drill there is a permanent non-reversible cure as I wrote you before. But do this *ONLY* after you have exhausted the options of solving the problem of the existing trem.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Oh I think some of what you say has merit, greekdude. That's why you don't see me opting for titanium replacements. The bridge would cost more than my whole guitar with the pickups.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Oh I think some of what you say has merit, greekdude. That's why you don't see me opting for titanium replacements. The bridge would cost more than my whole guitar with the pickups.

some has merit?? . Man try to isolate your problems :
1) is it loose and slippery nut? EASY DIAGNOSIS AND CURE
2) is it knife edges? easy fix
3) do you have stripped threads anywhere ? (nut/bridge)? if many then your bridge/nut is garbage --> change them. If not then there is an easy fix.
4) if after you fix all that and your guitar still does not play GREAT, then install new bridge/nut. If you still dont like it, sell it, since you never liked in the first place.

 

[Brandenburg]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Problem: JT580LP is set up properly, does not flutter, does not handle aggressive whammy use, comes out of tune easily, is only useful for occasional dips and pulls. All 7 examples of my JT580LPs were like this, new or old. I don't think it's my imagination, I think it's because it's a licensed and hence inferior quality bridge because softer metals were used in construction to lower costs. The heavier FR1000 I used did all of these things that my JT580LP does not.

The JT580LP bridge is "broke" because it doesn't do what I expect of it, so it needs to be "fixed" by being "replaced." The point of having a FR bridge is to be able to use it. Not gently touch it and pray it doesn't detune a quarter step. Might as well play a worthless fixed bridge guitar, whose only merit is tunings can be changed quickly.
...

umm that doesnt represent my experience with the 580lp at all..but some people just dont jive with some things though. seriously,IMO if they where setup properly, they would work fine. Now.. I had some issues with a floyd licensed by trem on my stagemaster not coming back to pitch.Tried the Vaseline trick and all it good with that trem but prefer the 580lp over that one

not going back to pitch? ever try a few dabs of Vaseline on the knife edges.. after you put a few dabs..really wail on that arm to work that lubricant..lol Also, how many spring are you using? what gauge of string? are those strings stretched properly or at all?These all play a factor in how a trem behaves.. well.. imo, they do.. seriously.. 4 springs but thats a bit to stiff for some but imo , is pretty stable for my heavy hand. I dont use the trem alot, but when I do, it always stays in tune

you are going to do what you want though.. your guitars...good luck

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Normally I use 3 springs. 4 is a good thought, especially for flutter, but that still won't address the issues of strings coming out of saddles or shifting and detuning in pitch after aggressive use.

Nothing special on strings and tuning: (9/E, 10/E, 10/E, 10/D, 11/Db, 11/C, 12/B).

The bridge is on its way. We'll see what happens.

I never sell my gear because it rarely brings back in value what I put into it. For this same reason, I don't collect guitars in hopes of profiting from trades. The instruments are simply tools. I would rather buy and mod a $200 guitar and get the same specs as an American model for less than $700 (200 guitar, 250 bridge, 200 pickups=650) than buy an American model used for $1200 and then panic every time it's scratched or bumped.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Normally I use 3 springs. 4 is a good thought, especially for flutter, but that still won't address the issues of strings coming out of saddles or shifting and detuning in pitch after aggressive use.

Nothing special on strings and tuning: (9/E, 10/E, 10/E, 10/D, 11/Db, 11/C, 12/B).

The bridge is on its way. We'll see what happens.

I never sell my gear because it rarely brings back in value what I put into it. For this same reason, I don't collect guitars in hopes of profiting from trades. The instruments are simply tools. I would rather buy and mod a $200 guitar and get the same specs as an American model for less than $700 (200 guitar, 250 bridge, 200 pickups=650) than buy an American model used for $1200 and then panic every time it's scratched or bumped.

you increase the number of new parameters bro, and this only going to make things more complex. About 200$ or 1200$ guitars, IMHO it doesn't matter if it is MIC or MIA, it only matters what woods it is made of. You might find a gem with a 200$ guitar, but chances are that it will suck no matter the upgrades. No pup or bridge is gonna bring back those frequencies of the tone envelop that were cut due to inferior woods.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Most production bolt on guitars are alder/rosewood/maple because that's the cheapest to source. We've seen declines in mahogany and especially ebony lately because they're harder to get ahold of. I've certainly found some guitars to be marginally improved--an MIC Hamer Scarab XT I have is mahogany and rosewood with set neck and sounds great. Unfortunately the nut was cut too shallow at the factory and a new one had to be put on when I went from 9s to 10s because it was buzzing on open strings.

In some cases quality is improving at lower tiers. I have a MIC Charvel Desolation neck thru with FR1000 and Blackouts. I think I picked it up for $400, which is much more guitar than I would have gotten for that amount 10-20 years ago.

Most of what's hitting your ear is 2000 khz. Frequencies are going to be notched out/boosted in DAW anyway via a parametric EQ.

And, many pickups are going to make a variety of different guitars sound similar. An EMG 81 might be a good example.

In this KV3s case it is very light. For my purposes, the Full Shred set was ideal for it because it didn't color the sound too much, whereas a JB was entirely too flabby and loose in the bridge position. I feel like it would have done better in a heavier body.

I'm not saying wood doesn't make a difference, but I don't think throwing money at better wood is necessarily worth it either.

 

[Brandenburg]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

you increase the number of new parameters bro, and this only going to make things more complex. About 200$ or 1200$ guitars, IMHO it doesn't matter if it is MIC or MIA, it only matters what woods it is made of. You might find a gem with a 200$ guitar, but chances are that it will suck no matter the upgrades. No pup or bridge is gonna bring back those frequencies of the tone envelop that were cut due to inferior woods.

perhaps BUT ill put my poplar body dinky up against a custom shop guitars with select "tone" wood with out a second thought.. it resonates so awesome, the body just feels alive some days..i have an alder body one that resonates well.. then i have an alder,mahogony, and basswood that do not exhibit the same qualities.. I also have a plywood strat.. although it doesnt resonate as much as some of the other guitars I own, it still sounds respectable IMO, in part because of the pickups..

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

In this day and age, it makes less sense to alter the physicality of something. We have software to emulate huge, sound treated rooms, so we don't use/build as many of those rooms as we used to.

Guitar wood might or might not make a difference. I'd rather compensate with a good pickup than mess with wood.

And you really can't know what a good cut of wood is unless you play it before you buy it. I live in an area where I have to order guitars online and hope they sound good when they arrive.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

perhaps BUT ill put my poplar body dinky up against a custom shop guitars with select "tone" wood with out a second thought.. it resonates so awesome, the body just feels alive some days..i have an alder body one that resonates well.. then i have an alder,mahogony, and basswood that do not exhibit the same qualities.. I also have a plywood strat.. although it doesnt resonate as much as some of the other guitars I own, it still sounds respectable IMO, in part because of the pickups..

definitely, I am just saying that carefully selected dried wood, no matter if it is poplar/mahogany/alder/etc or of american/indonesian/indian/brasillian origin .. will sound better than random wood. Had a chinese scalloped partscaster, loved every aspect of it except the extremely poor sustain. I upgraded everything, still sustain was not there. Sold it.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Most of what's hitting your ear is 2000 khz. Frequencies are going to be notched out/boosted in DAW anyway via a parametric EQ.

??? open E to open E it is 82 to 329 Hz. Anyway, you cannot boost something that does not exist in the first place.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

??? open E to open E it is 82 to 329 Hz. Anyway, you cannot boost something that does not exist in the first place.

The full spectrum of sound exists on all instruments to greater or lesser degrees.

Consider the following:

http://www.menet.umn.edu/~kgeisler/EQ/primer.htm

Take a guitar track in a DAW (in my case, Sonar X1), put on something like a +20 db on with something like a narrow Q, and sweep across until you find somewhere where the guitar track sticks out to you. In my case, it was 2.2 khz (which also seemed to be the sweet spot for the EMG HZ4 pickup I was using). I did this to great effect on this Judas Priest cover, which used the HZ4 on the right and a JB on the left. Bass also came out with the most pick attack (think Steve Harris or DD Verne of Overkill) at 2.2khz, but those had to be reduced so it didn't fight with the guitar. I'm still intending to rerecord the bass track at some point.

https://soundcloud.com/devolve1980/beyond-the-realms-of-death

You can boost anything, even if it exists very little. It just might not be very audible. This is especially true when you consider that you can EQ something in multiple octaves: bass is usually at 800hz, but also at 1.6khz, 2.4khz, and so on, depending on what aspects you want to bring out. And the Q width will affect other bands.

So when I'm mixing low E, I'm not just focusing on 82-329hz unless I'm mastering and two instruments are fighting at that very note and becoming indistinct. Depending on tuning, I'm usually tightening the bottom by putting on a high pass filter at 100-200hz. Everything below 200hz is cleared for kick and bass. A lot of people go down as low as 50 hz on kick but I don't because consumer grade speaker equipment doesn't replicate low tones that well. I also put a low pass filter on about 5-7khz to make sure I get rid of excess noise in the high end. As people age they lose the ability to hear highs. I'm 35 and my hearing tops out at 16 khz.

So, I'm looking for one instrument to cascade in multiple bands. And I'm looking for multiple instruments to be in multiple bands. By the time I overlap them, there is very little real estate left sonicallly. What could have been brought out by a superior tone wood will probably be inaudible in the mix. In my case, a good chunk of guitar mids (200hz-2 khz or so) are slightly deemphasized to make room for the bass and snare drum attack at around 800-1 khz. So when I'm mixing, high mids for guitar usually end up being at about 2-5 khz, while highs are at 5khz and above.

When people are listening to a guitar by itself, they usually don't think about that wide a range. "My guitar needs more low end," etc. Chances are in a mix it will be rolled off anyway or compensated for by kick and bass.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

And I also recorded this with a MIK lawsuit era P bass with a plywood body. I chanegd out the pickup with a Fender Original 62 reissue. Beautiful vintage stained maple neck and fretboard that was a butterscotch color. Unfortunately, the truss rod was junk and, even when tightened all the way, the neck still produced bow and high action in the middle frets.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Look here at about 1:45 or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwM_maueBA0

Comes back in tune after the flutter and use, and that's not actually that much use say, compared to Slayer (who used Kahlers, so they are kind of out of the discussion).

Try this video at 5:00.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy1eiMZ5nUk

Comes back in pitch, which mine does not. They are supposed to come back to pitch every time, perfectly. That's the point of them.

Yes, you can spot deviation, because if you do solos, and then come back to rhythms, you can spot that chords are out. During the recording process, this means leads have to be tracked and then checked for tuning, often after every individual take. This is workable but there's no excuse for it in a live situation.

Wish I could find a video of Def Leppard at VH1 Rock Honors several years ago--maybe 2006 or 07. Phil Collen holds his PC1 Jackson by only the bar and yanks it around as part of the stage show. Comes back into pitch.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Comes back in pitch, which mine does not. They are supposed to come back to pitch every time, perfectly. That's the point of them.

You won't achieve perfect return to pitch in both dives and pull ups, no matter what. Rich @ ibanezrules has written pages after pages about it. You may fine tune your guitar to return to pitch after heavy dives, or after heavy pull ups, or return to somewhere in between, but not complete return to pitch under any use pattern.

Wish I could find a video of Def Leppard at VH1 Rock Honors several years ago--maybe 2006 or 07. Phil Colleen holds his PC1 Jackson by only the bar and yanks it around as part of the stage show. Comes back into pitch.

Did you check it personally with a digital tuner?

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Did you check it personally with a digital tuner?

Oscillation would have been detectable against other instruments that remained in tune.

And, in the second video, it remained in pitch. It wouldn't be so noticeable for single lines, but definitely in chords.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

Even in the event that guitars don't return to pitch, the amount they come out between two guitarists doing similar things would be variable. It would be impossible to predict how they would come out of tune. One instrument coming out of tune might be unnoticable, but both coming out of pitch, not only with the rest of the band but each other, would be unmistakable.

 

[Inflames626]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

That said, is the tuning supposed to be as accurate as checking intonation on a digital strobe? No. However, I would find anything more than a few cents to be unacceptable.

Our ears have grown used to tuning inconsistencies, such as notes in higher registers being slightly duller and out of tune to lower registers. But if you mess up open string tuning, it affects everything else.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

^^^ Check ALL your axes. Do they intonate precisely 100% on open/12th/24th fret? Is the difference you take e.g. between open high E and E @ 24th fret acceptable? This is the kind of deviation you should expect with trem use. IMHO anything worse is not acceptable, but some minimal deviation it is OK.
Other aspect is that by muting, you change the pitch whether you like it or not. All these have to be taken into account as a whole system which you need to maintain working and sounding great.

 

[Kamanda~SD]

Re: Lowering Floyd Rose nut

This thread sucks.