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Does anyone charge more to set up a strat tremolo that is floating? I usually park them on the top and proceed as normal, but somebody requested it floating.

I looked online and it looks like people do that although it takes a while to go back and forth between tightening the strings and the springs like a Floyd. I was able to do it well enough with a whole step upward range, but took a lot more fiddling...

Pat

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Pat

Nope it's included in our standard set-ups either set flat or floating. Strat trems are much easier to get adjusted right than a Floyd. We do up charge for Floyds and not just because they are floating. Most Floyds these days are cheap copies made out of crappy pot metals and they rarely return to neutral perfectly often because of groves worn in the posts. The saddles fore and aft adjustments are difficult to use, poor design and there is just more to do with neutralizing the micro adjusts etc.

We offer the Strat trems either way and we also encourage folks who don't use their trems to let us set it flat since it improves tuning stability a great deal. They can still do dives.

Something that I do since I do so many set-ups is take a quick look at what is, what gauge strings are on it when it came in, where the term is set now, are any drop tunings in the mix. With this info I know in advance from experience that I may be tightening claw screws or even adding a spring or two to get from here to there. Since I likely set-up at least ten Strats a week these days it goes very quickly.

PS: Fender has a spec on their site of the back corner of the bridge being 1/8" off the deck. We disagree and consider this a bit too high so we set ours at less than 1/8" and more than 1/16".

PSS: When we set a trem flat we adjust the claw screws so that a full one step bend results in the trem just barely starting to lift. Point being it's not nailed to the body, it can still move a slight amount with bends.

Thanks hash, good info! Yeah I did about 1/16 also. 1/8 seems like a lot.

Pat

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Pat

Floating Strat trems are a breeze compared to a Floyd. If I had my way, they'd all be tossed in the Mariana Trench.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Exactly! Don't know how many times I've shared with clients that trems in general are unreliable and often don't return to neutral in tune....

Floyds are a different kind of.... stupid in my view though. If we consider who uses them it's often shredders who want action super low, they may run 9's which complicates lower action some and they do drop tunings including turning the low e to c.... Sheesh what a nightmare and it's often the case that there is not even enough adjustable range on a Floyd to intonate correctly tuned to C...

I hate them too but can you imagine Eddie without one?

So I was trying to figure out what the big deal was about Floyds (I'm an acoustic player) and then they started coming into my shop .... Must of been designed by a committee of politicians.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yes. Many of my fave Eddie licks were created on something other than a Floyd equipped axe.

Also, in an interview decades ago he was asked about his usage of Floyds. His reply? "I like them and I don't". He saw the drawbacks as well as anyone.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Yes but...

I love my strat and almost always use the whammy bar, I don't dive bomb anything. Having said that I'm always tuning on the fly, it doesn't get in the way, and dealing with its quirks is something I'm expecting. Also in my former life when I still had a les paul, I fought the tuning on that way more than I ever do my strat. But even that never got in the way of playing the thing, its all just what you expect and are prepared for.

Let's face it, we ALL hate them. At least Eddie had a tech who suffered through it probably after every gig

Floyd Rose was a jeweler.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Actually?

Would I lie to you?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

yes, dealing with setting up a Floyd is a royal PITA...but as a user I much prefer them to anything else...simply because of the locking nut...I've found them to return to tune FAR better than any alternative but a Kahler, and I never liked the ones I tried out years and years ago when they first came out (maybe they have a different feel these days for all I know)...in fact I've never noticed any problems with returning to position whilst playing in any given period of time (by that I mean a full gig, practicing for a few hours, etc.), then again I really haven't put that many hours of use on mine which is 25 years old, and any issues with posts being worn should (from my view) necessitate replacement for proper performance...I'm sure there's plenty of cr@ppy versions out there with sub-standard materials but mine seems not to be of that ilk as it's performed nicely over it's tenure in my life.

so, point being, you techs need to just get over it and deal with it (and of course charge appropriately)...I for one can't deal with the old school style of whammy bars and never could, they drive me up the wall, and I'm sure that sentiment is shared by a lot of others...

on the flip side of the attitude I curse all the time I have to deal with things in the trades that I think are retarded yet customers prefer them (like Emtek hardware...don't get me going on that stuff), so I understand the feelings, especially if presented with some model made from pot metal and shoddily manufactured

My fave whammied axe is a Vintage Icon V6M24 equipped with a Wilkinson VS-100 and locking Grovers. No problems with tuning.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince