Whammy Bar Abuse

Nitefly · 14 Jan 2006 at 14:45

Yesterday being a string changing / intonation setting day, today I decided to mess around with my guitar's bridge. My guitar is a funny thing, but it allows something cool (or not, depending on your veiw

) to be set. Basically, I set up the bridge to be floating so it can be converted back to a fixed bridge by the press of a button (Makes me sound like some techy, but it was very easy to do).

Now I've always played with a fixed bridge before now (Abielt the occational wobble) and have avoided floyd roses like the plague (The whole tuning thing looked to get in the way of the playing *waits for the flaming*). Suddenly being able to drop the strings until they were slack and have them come up almost perfectly intune, not to mention pulling the bridge up, is availible.

And its ridiculous fun. The amount of times I've picked a harmonic and pulled up then down dive bomb style must be in its 100's

Well, its not a locking trem so the tuning derails after 10 or so minutes but of course being able to change back quickly to a fixed bridge to tune doesnt make it a problem (tuning in floating damages the bridge permenantly, not sure if all guitars suffer the same fate!). Oh and just to kick you looking trem people in the teeth, I can set any tuning I want to floating with absolute ease. No Drop D add on required!

So yeah just saying its worth messing around with your guitar, even to try something new. I'm sure I'll be getting tierd of the alien ray gun vibes soon

Has anyone else tried something similar? How do people like their bridges? I'd be interested to hear.

Andelusion · 14 Jan 2006 at 14:50

You can whammy for days on my Jem without it going out of tune, the magic wares off though and to be honest I hardly ever even put the bar in anymore. It's nice to have though as you can get some crazy phrasing if you use the bar with bends etc.

Nitefly · 14 Jan 2006 at 14:55

Andelusion said:
You can whammy for days on my Jem without it going out of tune, the magic wares off though and to be honest I hardly ever even put the bar in anymore.

Yeah, I was looking at locking trem guitars when I wanted an upgrade once. I was basically told in every shop "If you want one, be prepared to live with it!". I decided its something that you don't NEED, therefore I went for the safer option thinking I might buy one as a 'toy' guitar (something to have fun on) when I'm a bit richer. Now I have the best of both worlds, yay!

What pursuaded you to buy one? Would you reccomend it?

SidewinderINC · 14 Jan 2006 at 16:13

Andelusion said:
You can whammy for days on my Jem without it going out of tune, the magic wares off though and to be honest I hardly ever even put the bar in anymore. It's nice to have though as you can get some crazy phrasing if you use the bar with bends etc.

as you can on my RG

i still cant wham (i think thats the term that should be used if you're calling it a whammy bar) very well though, it just sounds silly

vai uses it so well, its not all him though with the sounds is it?... he uses a load of midi effects for it to sound so "alien"..

i need to learn some of the techniques, i cant do the thing you see satch doing all the time where he does a pinch and then raises the bar and it screams (surfing with the alien 2mins 23 seconds in as an example), my guitar (so.. me) just fudges the note

Nitefly · 14 Jan 2006 at 16:17

SidewinderINC said:
i need to learn some of the techniques, i cant do the thing you see satch doing all the time where he does a pinch and then raises the bar and it screams (surfing with the alien 2mins 23 seconds in as an example), my guitar (so.. me) just fudges the note

Bah, I've been trying the 'second chorus' all damn day. No luck yet

Andelusion · 14 Jan 2006 at 17:08

Nitefly said:
Yeah, I was looking at locking trem guitars when I wanted an upgrade once. I was basically told in every shop "If you want one, be prepared to live with it!". I decided its something that you don't NEED, therefore I went for the safer option thinking I might buy one as a 'toy' guitar (something to have fun on) when I'm a bit richer. Now I have the best of both worlds, yay!

What pursuaded you to buy one? Would you reccomend it?

I wasn't persuaded by the trem, it's just a great guitar.

There's a lot of stigma associated with floyd rose type trems. There's nothing wrong with them, admittadly it takes longer to change strings and if you break one the others are going to go out of tune but the tuning stability makes up for that.

SidewinderINC said:
i need to learn some of the techniques, i cant do the thing you see satch doing all the time where he does a pinch and then raises the bar and it screams (surfing with the alien 2mins 23 seconds in as an example), my guitar (so.. me) just fudges the note

First make sure you can easily get pinched harmonics on the G, using your bridge pup helps ( you probably already know this ), then when you pinch the harmonic dip the bar a little bit then pull it up. I used to be proper obsessed with that but I think it sounds a bit pants now

skinnyl · 14 Jan 2006 at 17:19

i miss the day i had a trem, at least on a guitar worth playing. i've been a les paul man for far too long - wouldn't know what to do with the thing :\

Chronos-X · 14 Jan 2006 at 20:23

I assume you use a tremel-no or something similar?

Andelusion · 14 Jan 2006 at 21:07

It's something built into the Parker Fly models.

Locrian · 15 Jan 2006 at 02:05

I love the floyd rose on my Ibanez JS1200. Being able to dive to the point of slackening the strings then back to stable tuning in an instant is amazing fun. More often then not though i use it to slightly pollish off certain notes by using it to create a nice tremlo. I much prefere using the bar than vibrato because it raises and lowers the tone, instead of just raising it, giving it a better centre. In fact more often than not i feel very lost with out the bar!