Official Luthiers Forum!

How is it that the same pack of strings on two different guitars can feel different when it comes to stiffness? On one guitar i have no problem bending and i can add vibrato to the note held, but on the other guitar the strings seem to be a lot stiffer and i cannot hold the note as long and there is no chance at getting any vibrato.

One guitar is a fender stratocaster, avri 62
The other is a warmoth strat body with a fender neck and a 2 stud wilkinson tremolo

Is there any way to fix this problem?

Are the scales the same? If one is, say, a 25" scale and one is a 26.5" in scale, there's going to be a difference in stiffness, tension, etc.

They are the same scale. I have read up on properly setting up a guitar and how all of the different factors come into play, but with the scale being the same kinda stumped me.

Could it have anything to do with the height at the nut? When measuring with feeler gauges I have two different heights on the e strings. The high E measures a lot closer to the first fret than the low E. I'm wondering if maybe i just can't get a good grip on the e and b strings because of this. What do you think?

I'd be inclined to think it could be the different trem setups giving you the different feel. does one need to be bent farther than the other to achieve the same pitch? Is one trem set up stiffer? I've found it takes more bend with a trem setup because the trem moves as you bend.

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Rob

Now that I've compared the two closer, it seems I'm having to bend a little further to reach the same pitch, but not a whole lot. I stiffened up the tremolo by adding all five springs instead of just the three that were on it already and that really made a difference. Only problem there is now the tremolo is close to being useless, but I'm not too big of a tremolo user anyways. At least now I can play the thing!

Thanks for your help!