Meanwhile, at Warmoth...the Golden Era of the Whammy Bar: 1969 - 1989

aarontunes

aarontunes

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The English language is an interesting thing. It’s full of contradicting terms, colloquialisms, and misnomers that confuse and mislead. The name “tremolo bar”, for example. The word “tremolo” refers to a fluctuation in volume, but a tremolo bar alters pitch. It should therefore technically be called a vibrato bar, and yet it remains almost universally known as a tremolo bar.
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Yes, I've often wondered myself why it was labeled as such. And why do we drive on parkways and park in driveways????? :doh:
 
DangerousR6 said:
Yes, I've often wondered myself why it was labeled as such. And why do we drive on parkways and park in driveways????? :doh:
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Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?
 
ByteFrenzy said:
DangerousR6 said:
Yes, I've often wondered myself why it was labeled as such.
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Because vibrato was already being used in amps, where it's actually a tremolo ?
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Ahhh, the great mixup where no one wanted to correct it.  Reminds me of 3 Muskateers' and Milky Way bars.  They both came out at the same time and someone switched the wrappers on the original shipment, and they never corrected it becuase they were such big hits when they came out.  Think about it, the Milky Way bar has 3 ingredients, and the 3 Muskateers' bar only has the middle which is like a milky flavor/texture. One of the biggest gaffes in relatively recent times.
 
More importantly than what we call it is why the !@#$ did they ever become so ubiquitous as to make it difficult to find guitar bodies WITHOUT them?!
 
lafromla1 said:
Ahhh, the great mixup where no one wanted to correct it.  Reminds me of 3 Muskateers' and Milky Way bars.  They both came out at the same time and someone switched the wrappers on the original shipment, and they never corrected it becuase they were such big hits when they came out.  Think about it, the Milky Way bar has 3 ingredients, and the 3 Muskateers' bar only has the middle which is like a milky flavor/texture. One of the biggest gaffes in relatively recent times.
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Well there you have it. I've learned my new thing for today.
 
lafromla1 said:
Ahhh, the great mixup where no one wanted to correct it.  Reminds me of 3 Muskateers' and Milky Way bars.  They both came out at the same time and someone switched the wrappers on the original shipment, and they never corrected it becuase they were such big hits when they came out.  Think about it, the Milky Way bar has 3 ingredients, and the 3 Muskateers' bar only has the middle which is like a milky flavor/texture. One of the biggest gaffes in relatively recent times.
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I've heard that story differently.  I've heard they were going to ship the candy to England, but the English weren't fond of the French for historical reasons, so they used that name instead.

BUT THEN: I just now  I looked it up on Wikipedia, and there's a completely different story there:

The 3 Musketeers Bar was the third brand produced and manufactured by M&M/Mars, introduced in 1932. Originally, it had three pieces in one package, flavored chocolate, strawberry and vanilla; hence the name. Rising costs and wartime restrictions on sugar saw the phasing out of the vanilla and strawberry pieces to leave only the more popular chocolate.[1] Costing five cents when it was introduced, it was marketed as one of the largest chocolate bars available, one that could be shared by friends
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.

And more international weirdness with the Milky Way:

The American version of the Milky Way bar is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with caramel and covered with milk chocolate and sold as the Mars bar everywhere else. The Milky Way is available everywhere else as well, but it is a different chocolate bar, with a character all of its own... The European version of the bar has no caramel topping, and consists of a nougat center that is considerably lighter than that of the Mars bar..
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Basically, go to a different country, and you can't trust the wrapper.
 
Jet-Jaguar said:
lafromla1 said:
Ahhh, the great mixup where no one wanted to correct it.  Reminds me of 3 Muskateers' and Milky Way bars.  They both came out at the same time and someone switched the wrappers on the original shipment, and they never corrected it becuase they were such big hits when they came out.  Think about it, the Milky Way bar has 3 ingredients, and the 3 Muskateers' bar only has the middle which is like a milky flavor/texture. One of the biggest gaffes in relatively recent times.
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I've heard that story differently.  I've heard they were going to ship the candy to England, but the English weren't fond of the French for historical reasons, so they used that name instead.

BUT THEN: I just now  I looked it up on Wikipedia, and there's a completely different story there:

The 3 Musketeers Bar was the third brand produced and manufactured by M&M/Mars, introduced in 1932. Originally, it had three pieces in one package, flavored chocolate, strawberry and vanilla; hence the name. Rising costs and wartime restrictions on sugar saw the phasing out of the vanilla and strawberry pieces to leave only the more popular chocolate.[1] Costing five cents when it was introduced, it was marketed as one of the largest chocolate bars available, one that could be shared by friends
Click to expand...
.

And more international weirdness with the Milky Way:

The American version of the Milky Way bar is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with caramel and covered with milk chocolate and sold as the Mars bar everywhere else. The Milky Way is available everywhere else as well, but it is a different chocolate bar, with a character all of its own... The European version of the bar has no caramel topping, and consists of a nougat center that is considerably lighter than that of the Mars bar..
Click to expand...

Basically, go to a different country, and you can't trust the wrapper.
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Sounds like the telephone game......my version came from my Marketing professor in college, so take it for what it's worth.
 
I can verify that over here what you call a Milky Way, is a Mars Bar. Except the Mars Bar has a better taste.

There is a Milky Way here, but it is a different thing to a Mars Bar.

And we have a Snickers Bar, which is a Snickers Bar but tastes better, but for years before the name was changed to Snickers they were called Marathons.

I'm going to be in the US for a few weeks soon, I miss this chocolate but not as much as Belgian Cote D'Or.
 
    All I know about Milky Ways and 3 Musketeers is that after Halloween they were the candy bars I ate after I had eaten every other candy bar. 
 
    On the subject of the whammy bar, I think my favorite use of it is on the beginning of Zeppelin's "In the Evening"  guitar solo.  Slim Jim Page has the whammy bar all the way down and lifts it up gradually while slowly arrpegiating an E chord.  It sounds like someone kicking in a door.
    I also love the whammy bar trick in Joe Satriani's "Lords of Karma".  Right before the solo he plays an open G string, depresses the bar all the way down, and hits taps a harmonic on the 4th fret of the G string.  Then he raises the bar all the way up, and 2 steps beyond before launching into a solo.  It's something that's easy to play that makes you sound like an incredibly awesome guitar player. 
 
Another user of the bar was Ritchie Blackmore, though not any longer Here's an extract of a GUitar World interview Feb 1991, I think I've still got a copy and I've posted a video of a German TV rehearsal where it is used really well, solo starts around 2:24...


GW: You started using the vibrato bar extensively on In Rock.

BLACKMORE: Yes, that's right. I'd seen the James Cotton Blues Band at the Fillmore East, and the guitarist in the band played with the vibrato bar. He got the most amazing sounds. Right after seeing him, I started using the bar. Hendrix inspired me, too.

GW: You used to give the whammy bar a real workout.

BLACKMORE: I went crazy with it. I used to have quarter-inch bars made for me because I'd keep snapping the normal kind. My repairman would look at me strangely and say, "What are you doing to these tremolo bars?" Finally, he gave me this gigantic tremolo arm made of half-an-inch of solid iron and said, "Here. If you break this thing, I don't wanna know about it!"
About three weeks later I went back to the shop. He looked at me and said, "No - you haven't." And I said, "Yes I have." In graphic detail, I explained to him how I would twirl the guitar around the bar, throw it to the floor, put my foot on it and pull the bar off with two hands. He was a bit of a purist, so he wasn't amused.

GW: There is a lot of unusual noise during the final solo of "Hard Lovin' Man" [In Rock]. Is that you, throwing your guitar around the studio?

BLACKMORE: If I remember right, I was knocking my guitar up and down against a door in the control room. The engineer looked at me oddly. He was one of your typical, old-school engineers. Like my repairman, he wasn't amused, either.

GW: Did you ever try a locking-nut tremolo system?

BLACKMORE: No. I don't use the twang bar anymore. It's become too popular.

[youtube]04O-B5aAcqE[/youtube]
 
Wow! They sounded so good in that line-up. Such dynamics! Amazing.
Love Blackmore's tone.

 
Logrinn said:
Wow! They sounded so good in that line-up. Such dynamics! Amazing.
Love Blackmore's tone.
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Indeed, Blackmore has had some great tones over the years. But always with clarity and character, that era and the tone on Made In Japan, Machine Head I love.

Just goes to show you don't need a lot of distortion to sound powerful, but you need precision with a tone like that.
 
Referring to it as a "tremolo" is a pet peeve of mine. There is no tremolo going on with the use of that device. It's vibrato or pitch variation. And what the heck made Leo Fender think it was "synchronized"??
 
Don't get me started on Fender's misuse of Tremolo & Vibrato...  :confused4:

If you want to go all 'conspiracy theorist' about it, you could say Fender was sullying the definitions so he could market his tremolo circuit as Vibrato because Magnatone's vibrato circuit had musicians viewing electronic vibrato as superior to a tremolo circuit. Then when he worked out his version of a mechanical vibrato unit for the Strat, he couldn't exactly make all his 'vibrato' circuits on his amps obsolete by calling the bridge a vibrato unit, even if it truly was?  :tard:
 
lafromla1 said:
...the Milky Way bar has 3 ingredients, and the 3 Muskateers' bar only has the middle which is like a milky flavor/texture. One of the biggest gaffes in relatively recent times.
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Eh, urban legend.  The three Musketeers candy bar is named that because of the primary ingredient, nougat, which comes from that region of France.
 
Street Avenger said:
Referring to it as a "tremolo" is a pet peeve of mine. There is no tremolo going on with the use of that device. It's vibrato or pitch variation. And what the heck made Leo Fender think it was "synchronized"??
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I think I can answer your last question.


Up until the Strat's six-screw "synchronized" tremolo, most tremolo bars had either a moving tailpiece and a stationary bridge, or vise versa. They were separate pieces. On the Strat, the bridge and the "tailpiece" (or in other words, the block the strings anchor in to) where bolted to each other, and thus moved in tandem... a.k.a. "synchronized".
 
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