Putting a Left Handed Tremolo On a Right Handed Guitar?

[ZackPomerleau]

Can anyone tell me if this is ANY different to route for on a guitar, or to install other than the arm being in another place? People are telling me it is totally different, when I feel it isn't.

 

[Nando Vallart]

Yes there is...
The route for the block is not centralized, as you can see here:

SRV reversed the bridge in his guitar (very rough you can see the wood he put in the route):

 

[willyk]

You can order a right handed body routed for a left handed trem. I don't know if it costs more but you can ask..

 

[ZackPomerleau]

yes it does, 45 dollars more which puts me on hold even longer, sigh...

 

[DangerousR6]

Yes there is...
The route for the block is not centralized, as you can see here:

SRV reversed the bridge in his guitar (very rough you can see the wood he put in the route):

Stevie didn't do it, his guitar tech did. And he only used a lefty because Stevie had trashed the other one during a show, and when the tech was repairing the guitar the only gold strat trem he could find was a left one.

 

[dbw]

That sounds like folklore to me, Doug... surely the tech could have gone to any guitar store and bought a strat with a righty trem.  Obviously facing the right direction is WAY WAY more important than the color.

 

[DangerousR6]

That sounds like folklore to me, Doug... surely the tech could have gone to any guitar store and bought a strat with a righty trem.  Obviously facing the right direction is WAY WAY more important than the color.

Nope it's absolutely true, the guitar tech told of it in a book about Stevie's life......I've done alot of research on Stevie, and he pretty much let his tech do what he had to do to keep it going. And by a twist of fate the lefty trem was actually favored by Stevie after the tech had changed it.
He even told of the neck's fretboard was Stevie's favorite Pao Farro, and that he had refretted it so many times that it virtually became useless.

 

[kreig]

FACT - see this yellow Moderne . . .lefty w/ a righty FR ! the difference is that there is a 1/8" offset between this combination of the route and the reverse install.

I had to have Mike Lull fix this a few years back ! ! ! he was the one who caught it !

you're very welcome :hello2:

 

[jackthehack]

That sounds like folklore to me, Doug... surely the tech could have gone to any guitar store and bought a strat with a righty trem.  Obviously facing the right direction is WAY WAY more important than the color.

Nope it's absolutely true, the guitar tech told of it in a book about Stevie's life......I've done alot of research on Stevie, and he pretty much let his tech do what he had to do to keep it going. And by a twist of fate the lefty trem was actually favored by Stevie after the tech had changed it.
He even told of the neck's fretboard was Stevie's favorite Pao Farro, and that he had refretted it so many times that it virtually became useless.

Don't know where you heard/read that, but it's B.S.. Rene Martinez used to work on my axes, too, before he quit Charley's Guitar Shop in Dallas as he was supposed to go on the road with Stevie Ray on David Bowie's "Serious Moolight" tour, (the deal with Stevie doing the tour fell out; if you look on YouTube I think there are still some videos of Las Colinas rehearsals for that tour) "Texas Flood" was released shortly thereafter and Rene wound up on the road in support until Stevie's death. Stevie's "#1" axe got the mod to left handed tremolo sometime before that; it was the result of brilliant ideas and all night diatribes about Hendrix's equipment setup; this was in the early 80's when those of us in the scene were in Phase 2 of Too Much Cocaine and brilliant ideas abounded real late at night. Stevie's main Strats were late 50's/early 60's and although refretted with taller wire than original always maintained the stock slab rosewood boards that came on them.

 

[Tonar8352]

Order up the body with a reverse trem route and do it up like this.  Works Great!

 

[m4rk0]

That sounds like folklore to me, Doug... surely the tech could have gone to any guitar store and bought a strat with a righty trem.  Obviously facing the right direction is WAY WAY more important than the color.

Nope it's absolutely true, the guitar tech told of it in a book about Stevie's life......I've done alot of research on Stevie, and he pretty much let his tech do what he had to do to keep it going. And by a twist of fate the lefty trem was actually favored by Stevie after the tech had changed it.
He even told of the neck's fretboard was Stevie's favorite Pao Farro, and that he had refretted it so many times that it virtually became useless.

so, was Pao Ferro (on the original) an option that fender offered at one time, or was that a warmoth neck?

 

[stubhead]

Pao ferro is the wood that FENDER offers on the SRV signature model, which isn't what SRV played - he played his old beat-to-crap #1. Pao ferro kind of looks like dirty rosewood, which was probably good enough for Fender's way of thinking... Stevie also DIDN'T play "Texas Special" pickups, SRV signature pickups, or any other stuff that anyone wants to sell you - he played whatever old pickups ended up in the old beat-to-crap guitar.
Like Eric Clapton's "Blackie", authenticity is crucially important, except when it's not. :blob7:

Most likely, Stevie Ray was a great guitar player, he didn't necessarily own a specially great guitar.... Hey Jack T. H., I was in Austin from 1980 to 1987 when SRV was crawling up from the greasy blues rat status to Guitar Hero God status- were you in Dallas, or Austin? (I would've sworn David Murray or David Grissom or Denny Freeman would've scored the god hero status, SRV was kinda... drunk a lot.... :icon_tongue

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Stevie didn't do it, his guitar tech did. And he only used a lefty because Stevie had trashed the other one during a show, and when the tech was repairing the guitar the only gold strat trem he could find was a left one.

I'd always heard he bought it used, and it was already like that.  In other words, no one knows who did it.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Stevie also DIDN'T play "Texas Special" pickups, SRV signature pickups, or any other stuff that anyone wants to sell you - he played whatever old pickups ended up in the old beat-to-crap guitar.

I've heard the pickups of his era's guitars were a crap shoot as far as windings went.  They were wound on a machine that didn't necesarily count the windings.  The operator just stopped it rotating when it looked right.  There were mis-match and voicing issues as some were wound really hot, and some not so hot.  The Texas Specials and the like are just an attempt at a hotter, less scientific winding process, or more turns.  Any truth to that.

 

[Nando Vallart]

[and that he had refretted it so many times that it virtually became useless.

Looks like he didn't have Stainless Steel frets... good for us that it's available now  :laughing7:

 

[jackthehack]

"Hey Jack T. H., I was in Austin from 1980 to 1987 when SRV was crawling up from the greasy blues rat status to Guitar Hero God status- were you in Dallas, or Austin? (I would've sworn David Murray or David Grissom or Denny Freeman would've scored the god hero status, SRV was kinda... drunk a lot.... )"

I lived in Dallas, but got down to Austin on a regular basis; peripherally knew Stevie from the Cobras days back in the 70s. One of the funniest mis-bookings I've ever witnessed was when a "hep cat" dude booked the Cobras to play at a Young Republicans reception at the Anatole in Dallas conjunct the '72 or '74 elections. Wish I had a vid of that....

 

[jackthehack]

Forgot to add; the pickups in SRVs axes would have been all late 50s black bottoms or early 60s gray bottoms. Back in the 70s most of us poor muscians played old late 50s/early 60s Strats because they were commodity items in pawn shops and typically had for under $300, beat up ones were cheapest; new Strats cost around $450 then.

While there was variation in output of pickups of Strats of that era, I don't recall ever seeing/hearing/playing anything that was remarkably out of norm.

Having owned '54, '57, '62 and '64 Strats and used all the Fender Custom Shop sets, the Fat 50s and '69 gray bottoms are voiced so much like the originals I doubt I could tell them from the vintage pickups if you swapped them out in a vintage piece. The SRV sets are just slightly higher output, and not all that different from the Fat 50s.