Not All Tremolos Are Created Equal

[eboy87]

'Scuze me whilst I step up on my soapbox, I need to rant for a minute. Now, I'm not a person prone to violence, and I'm usually pretty calm, but this sent me up the wall. I've been working on my Standard Strat for the past three weeks. I work as a sound engineer for a few local companies, and that's kept me from being able to work on the guitar. Anyway, when I bought it, it had the Fender Tremolo bridge on it, but no tremolo arm.

Now, I've been meaning to put the Hot Noiseless pickups in this, and am working on the shielding mod, so my Strat's been sitting in pieces on my deks for quite some time. I finally made my trip to Banjo Center (no offence intended) to pick up the part I needed. Well, I knew I was in trouble when the salesman was missing from the desk. A guy from the bass department came over to help out. They didn't have any of the Fender parts (I had come looking for a specific part, from Fender), and said this ProLine part would fit instead. I was skeptical, but for $2 (another red flag), I decided it was worth a try. Got back, and low and behold, the threads are too big for my bridge. The ProLine was starting to cut its own threads in the soft metal. I spent an entire weekend polishing the chrome on the top part of the bridge, and now it has metal shavings all over it.

I've been burned before by the "Pro Audio" department over there before, but this is the first time I've gotten the shaft from the guitar department. So, now I'm out about $4, and with gas prices, and living paycheck to paycheck, that's a lot for me. And I still have to go back and pay them around $15 for the part that I do need. Grrr!

Ok, rant over. Thanks for listening, and I'm sorry if I came off being an butthole, didn't mean to, I'm not really like that. It's just been a long couple of weeks, and this project was supposed to be a nice relaxing, enjoyable experience. I thought the tremolo would be the easiest part, guess I was wrong. Oh well, lesson learned. Thanks for playing along

Ian

[sumgai]

Ian,

Ah, so how you wanna take the Blue Pill, do you?

I'd recommend that you cool your ardor, and send off for a new Inertia Block (Leo's official name for what you just stripped the threads out of) from someplace like www.callahamguitars.com who sells such little jewels as this:




In fact, you can buy a whole kit, everything you need in one place, and made of steel to boot, no more thread-stripping, right from the same website: www.callahamguitars.com/partsstr.htm. But you should start at the top level, linked above. That way, you'll get the entire site through his menu, which is a good thing.

There are other parts sellers out there, some more expensive, some less so. I've got a few clients that have various Callaham parts, and from what I've seen, it's all top-drawer quality.

HTH


sumgai

[eboy87]

Thanks Sumgai, it's just been a long week and I needed to vent some steam. From what I can tell, the threads at the bottom of the inertia block (that's what that thing's called) are still intact. The only part that has unwanted threads is less than 1/16" deep from the top of the block, but the chrome top-piece is intact. I think I can just get the Fender arm (no more proline for me thankyaverymuch) and it will work perfectly.

I was checking out pictures online, and the Fender arm is noticably thinner at the threads than the ProLine one I was sold.

Apologies for not counting to ten. Won't happen again. ;D