tuning problems

[steve]

ok, I have a whammy bar but whenever I use it my guitar goes out of tune. Isthere anyway I can stop that from happening (I don't have floyd rose tremelo, it's the kind that only bends notes down)???

[flexistential]

several things you could do... unfortunately the most effective are also the most expensive...

here we go, in order from least expensive and easiest on down...

1.)apply a *little* WD40 or graphite powder to your nut on and under each string... this is a short term pseudo fix...

2.)get a graphite nut installed... pretty cheap, pretty easy, quite effective... an LSR roller nut is better but more tricky to install and more expensive...

3.)buy some locking tuners... (my life changed the day i installed Sperzel tuners...) i cant recommend locking tuners enough... they are *the* answer to always being in tune no matter what you so with the bar, or anything else for that matter... this is in conjunction with a graphite nut is by far the best solution...

4.)buy a new bridge (trem unit) expensive and tricky..may require re-routing / re-drilling / be impossible... if you can, i really recommoned Wilkinson... avoid "folyd rose" and all the "under licence"... like the plague... all but the *very* best are poorly cast, cheap alloy, which kill tone and are not "precision engineered" and you will spend much of your time fighting the evil things...

5.)all of the above... :D

[Migs4]

whats the difference between a graphite and and ivory nut? and about locking tuners.... if u lock them, wont they slightly go out of tune?

[ESP_Viper]

I've never heard of or had locking tuners go out of tune when you lock them.

A graphite nut is legal, ivory nuts are illegal. :) Graphite nut is the best, lowish priced nut there is. It is slick and allows the strings to slide freely, therefore staying in tune a lot better.

[steve]

alright thanks alot

[Migs4]

i would probably get locking tuners and a graphite nut then.... thnks...

[gck]

I have the following tremolo "setup" on my strat which works perfectly in tune:

*) an american standard tremolo unit (you know, that "strat" type tremolo, not a floyd rose locking trem.), 4 springs

*) bone nut, carved by myself

*) Schaller locking tuners
Locking tuners definitely are a MUST unless you have a locking nut (in which case the gain of locking tuners would be void of course!)

Carve the nut so that the groves go aren't parallel to the bottom of the nut, but angled so that the string only rests on a very small portion of the nut. It's hard to explain: uhm, carve the groves to that the grove endpoint facing to the headstock it much lower than the one facing to the fretboard, and the string only rests on the edge of the grove that faces the fretboard. The groves should only be a bit wider than the string that fits in, and deep enough for at least 3/4 to 7/8 of the string to go in (so that the strings won't jump out when you use your whammy bar). If the nut is carved badly, it won't matter wether it's graphite or anything else, it will be bad in any case :)

To make everything even smoother, a guy from my music store showed me a very special trick: get some "oil for the key of wind instruments" and put little portions of it into the groves at the nut, the bridge and the string tees (if your guitar has some) i.e. every point the strings touch: that special oil won't go into the windings of wound strings and kill their sound, and it's pretty cheap.

If you try out something of the above tips, I'm sure it will help a lot!

[steve]

what if I were to put a strat tremelo system in, a graphite nut and a regular tuning system???? would that keep it in tune???

[flexistential]

probably not no... at least not 100%...

WHY:
1.)let's face it... strat style trems have been around *long* time and they are a *very* long shot from being the cutting edge in trem technology... in fact they are down right "low-tech" especially the 6 screw models... which is why even fender moved toward the superior 2 screw system as the trem design of choice... even fenders answers to the very lacking 6 screw design don't compare to the "semi-floating" bridges by Wilkinson and Schaller...

2.)there's just no getting around the necessity for locking tuners... on traditional tuning machines the string winds around the peg several times in order to generate enough grip by friction to dissapate the linear string tension ie. keep the string attached to the tuning peg... these windings reach a state of equilibrium or rest once once the guitar had been tuned and the tension has been on the strings for a while... BUT... when you use your trem the string tension along the length of the string is suddenly reduced... the unevenly stretched windings around the tuning peg slacken off like a watch spring (on a small scale)... then you put he tension back on and the windings on the tuning peg pull tight and return *unevenly* to somewhere *near" the original position of rest... ie... out of tune... *NOW* locking tuners have a small vise clamp mechanism within the tuning peg so the string is locked into the hole in the peg... so there is no need to wrap the string around the peg even once... hence no windings... no "spring" effect... perfect tune... *if* you have a good bridge and nut... see point 1.)...