Trem block Material?

[stubhead]

There are many, many vibrato bridge designs where the arm screws down deep beyond the base plate and into the block.

There is a very, very, very useful modification to these - take the arm (at least!) down to your good full-service creaky dusty ol' hardware store - hopefully the entire guitar. NOT the bright shiny ACE chain hardware store with vacuum-wrapped "product." In the back you will find spools of white plastic polyethylene tubing. Not clear fish tank tubing, this is translucent and stiffer. You will find a piece that snuggies up over the threaded portion of the bar but slips partway into the top hole of the bridge. The original design of these things are horrid - the threads are way at the bottom, which creates a lot of leverage and if they're screwing into potmetal zinc... well where did YOU think those tiny metal shavings were coming from, THE GEARS IN YOUR BRAIN?!?! :icon_scratch:

What the tubing does is transfer a lot of the stress to the interaction between the upper, non-threaded part of the bar and the upper non-threaded hole. If you just can't find a real hardware store anywhere, you have to find some other... well, 'zampily, the really skinny Papermate ballpoint disposable pens have a section of the shaft towards the tail that'll do. They're such  godawful writing devices you're actually liberating the poor downtrodden pen's ass into a world of creativity and joyful music!

There's another pen part that does it, I think it's part of the cartridge of Pilot G2's? Saving old dead pens of various ilk is a good way to start upping your plastic cylinder collection, as they say in the fountain-pen repair biz, "You're only as good as your junk drawer"... in desperation & despair, some have even resorted to wrapping nylon plumber's tape or even duck tape around that little top 5/8" of the bar, which eventually results in a gooey mess of destroyed tape, but better that than a destroyed tremolo.

Regarding the issue of adding weight or "mojo" to the spring-suspended area, it may be instructive that one of the leading purveyors of brass blocks for the obviously "weighty" sounds - "Tired of that old crappy lightweight block stifling your creativity to the point that all the other guys laugh at you, kick sand on you and steal your chick?" - is also one of the leading purveyors of ultra-lightweight titanium blocks - "Tired of that old crappy brass block weighing down your seething talent which is just about to BURST as soon as you get a... lighter block?" I think objectively, you have to calculate the wavelength of musical vibrations, expressed as a factor of the variant vibration speeds of the molecules of different metals? Or maybe it's the molecular speed that's the factor and the notes are the... factorees? Do let us know how it comes out.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Unfortunately, little or no purely objective data exists

That's because objectivity has no place in the arts.

He's not asking for objectivity in the arts. "More treble" or "better sustain" is not an expression of artistic sentiment, it's a scientific claim.

Imagine you want to do a painting of a sunset. You need some red paint. You go to a store, ask for some red paint and the guy sells you a tube of it. You get home, squeeze some out, and... it's blue. You go back to the store.

"You told me this paint was red," you say, "but it's blue".

"No, it's red!" says the clerk.

"Look, " you say, squeezing some out. "That is definitely, objectively blue."

"Ah, " smiles the clerk, "but you see, objectivity has no place in the arts!"

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Well it's no "trem" I've ever heard of.

Floyd Rose, Kahler, Wilkinson (and of course Bigby and Fender, which are archaic). The Washburn "Wonderbar" is no longer made.

Who uses they type you're referring to??

Fender's trems, both vintage and the modern two-post stuff, use an arm that is held by the block. I *think* pop-in FR arms are held in place by the block. Kahler and Bigsby trems don't use a block at all, same for the Wonderbar. Callaham uses a "virtual pop-in arm" where the arm is held securely by the block but there's a bit of threading too just to keep it properly attached.

 

[DocNrock]

Lots of good discussion in this thread.  As has been mentioned, there are a lot of things that could be considered "snake oil' to some, and "useful" to somone else.  Brass trem blocks are one of those items, I believe.

The people advertising them make it sound like your Floyded guitar is going to be thin and not cut through the mix if you don't use THIS!  Sounds like "snake oil," to me.  But there are thinking individuals in the world, like the people in this thread.  That said, I do have brass blocks on most of my Floyds.  Did the guitar sound like crap with the original block?  No.  Does it sound different with the block?  The difference is not huge, but I think it is there.  At that point, the end user has to decide if he/she likes the different tone more than the original.  Better or worse is subjective.  I find that on a guitar with an alder body and a maple neck and maple fingerboard, I really like the brass block.  I think it adds some thickness to the sound without losing the punch that wood combo gives.  But if it is a mahogany body and neck, or something similar, there is much less of a difference, to my ear, anyway.

The paper-in-oil cap thing is another thing someone brought up.  I have a few of those, but only because I liked the concept, not because I thought they made an improved tone.  After all, they are bleeding frequencies away, not processing or adding them to the output jack.  But I do think their capacitance curves are a bit different, so the kinetics of frequency bleed are likely to be different.  Whether or not that can be heard, I have no idea.  I will say, though, that I prefer mylar or orange drop caps to the ceramic ones.  But, the only reason is that I think the manufacturing tolerances are tighter, so a 0.022uF mylar cap is likely very close to 0.022uF.  The ceramic ones are dirt cheap and not a lot goes into them, I would bet.  A 0.022uF is probably somewhere around 0.022, so there may be an effect on your tone as you may not be bleeding away frequencies you want to, or may be bleeding off ones you want to keep.  Disclaimer:  I know nothing about capacitor manufacturing, so I am probably just blowing hot air.  But it sounded good at the time.  :laughing7:  Seriously, though, I do remember reading this somewhere in a guitar repair book.  Which book, I don't remember.  I do know it was not an advertisement, however.

IMHO, a lot of these aftermarket parts probably do change tone to some degree or another.  But the change itself is not necessarily better or worse.  I think it is up to the end user to decide if they like the change, or not.  Objective vs. subjective.     

 

[ORCRiST]

I also have to vote for brass.

In my personal experience nothing beats a quality bell brass block mated with these: http://www.rawvintage.com/eng/item_springs.php

You want killer tone and sustain, pair those two and rejoice.

ORC

 

[dmraco]

combine a brass nut with a brass block...nirvana.

 

[Jet-Jaguar]

So, over at the Seymour Duncan forums, someone tried three different Floyd Rose trem blocks and recorded the results, which you can hear for yourself:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/showthread.php?181881-The-great-Floyd-Rose-Big-Block-Shootout&highlight=trem+block+brass+titanium

For what it's worth, I could hear a difference, and like many people in that thread, I didn't like the titanium block's sound.  But that's my personal opinion, and others might like the titanium tone.

 

[bagman67]

I can hear a slight difference between the stock part, the Ti and the brass, but I'd have liked a link to the unmodified guitar, as well.  Also, I'd have liked some clean sounds.  The crushing distortion doesn't do much for an objective evaluation, when a huge amount of what you're hearing is amp, not guitar.  None of the tones was to my taste ,so calling any one of them "better" is kind of a non-starter for me.

 

[LushTone]

I can hear a slight difference between the stock part, the Ti and the brass, but I'd have liked a link to the unmodified guitar, as well.  Also, I'd have liked some clean sounds.  The crushing distortion doesn't do much for an objective evaluation, when a huge amount of what you're hearing is amp, not guitar.  None of the tones was to my taste ,so calling any one of them "better" is kind of a non-starter for me.

Cool riffs and basis for a review. But, not a good tone/amp setting for this review. I agree with Bagman about the clean tones being more ideal.

I think these subtle changes to a guitar can make a big difference for the player, but not necessarily the audience. As a player, if I like a guitar's tone more, I'll play better. Obviously, this will make a difference to the audience. :laughing7:

 

[Strat Avenger]

Yeah, I can't believe there was no clean-tone comparison.