News And Updates

Thanks to everyone who has been voting on the sound samples for the different bridges! I will keep the poll open, but since I happen to agree with the results at the time of writing, and since I have new findings, I will reveal the results.

• Bridge 1 = Ball bearing
• Bridge 2 = Original Floyd Rose
• Bridge 3 = Stainless steel knife

First of all, I am not disappointed. Why, you might ask? Read on… Secondly, this is for one guitar, and a pretty unique one at that. The material, for instance, is jeluton, which is not commonly regarded a tone-wood. Other guitars will render different results. Furthermore, I selected two tones more or less at random, but other tones will give different results. The distorted tone is the one that decided for me, and for most other voters that have commented on or off-line. It was just more complex and “tight” with the F-R.

Anyway, I got my hardened steel knives back and discovered that they made quite a (positive, I think) difference to the sound as well. So, I went on and made three new tremolo spring blocks to examine all avenues and see what might have tipped things in the F-R’s favor. So, here are three new sound samples. All use the hardened knife and one is with an aluminum block, one is with a brass block and one is with a steel block. I also made a stainless steel block, but have not had time to test it yet.

• Block 1: clean11 / dist11
• Block 2: clean12 / dist12
• Block 3: clean13 / dist13

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To make things more interesting, I will raffle off a black fixed bridge (i.e. a set of 6 tuners) to the voter who can identify correctly which is aluminium, brass and steel respectively. I will announce the results on Feb 1, 2009. If more than one has a correct answer, the coolest project will win, so please let me know how you plan to use the bridge if you win it. Submit your entries via e-mail only please.

And one more thing: obviously, some of the ergonomic aspects are lessened with the other spring blocks. Here are the weights:

• Aluminium = 43 grams
• Steel = 124 grams
• Brass = 132 grams

Please help me decide which bridge sounds the best. The samples below are recorded using a Line6 GuitarPort using Windows Vista Sound Recorder. The tones used are “Mr. Clean” with Gate and Compressor turned off and Drive turned all the way down, and “80’s Metal Rythm”. Again, the bridges have been mounted on “Red Devil” (see Gallery). One of the samples is the original Floyd-Rose, one is the EGS tremolo with a stainless knife and one is with ball bearings. One of the clean samples has a volume increase that I cannot explain - try to just listen to the sound qualities.

• Bridge 1: clean1 / dist1
• Bridge 2: clean2 / dist2
• Bridge 3: clean3 / dist3

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I am continuing to struggle with the hardened fulcrum knives. It’s been to the point where I have devised a different design, relying on ball bearings instead. I have tried two versions of bearings: one with steel balls and one with ceramic. The results to date are inconclusive, but I think that the response of the strings (i.e. sound) is significantly better with the knife edge.
Having said that, I want them more durable in a product.
Here is the hardened version that I just received, after only a few minutes of playing:

And the ball-bearing prototype:

I have returned the hardened knives to the manufacturer, hoping that there is something that can be done to improve the performance. I will try to organize some comparative sound samples of knife vs. ball-bearing to see if the difference is real or imagined.

I have spent some more time with the camera and Photoshop to create the pictures for the products page. Here is the silver version of the tremolo. Note that it is possible to use silver knobs of course.

Silver Tremolo

And here are some of the color choices. Aside from black and silver, they are available at a small extra cost.

Tuner Colors