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Fanned Fret Tremolo Prototype

People have been asking for a fanned fret tremolo for years, and I have spent many cycles designing the ultimate modular tremolo, which will scale just like the regular hardware and can be used for any number of strings, and scale length relationship, etc. The really difficult part was cracking how to make the tremolo modular, but still possible to affect all the strings at once with a single arm. As amazing as the Tremologic™ invention is, most people expect a tremolo to behave in the “normal” way. We do need a little more time to figure out if it actually works though.

The scores of people who have asked if they can put a tremolo on the regular Boden guitars have been brushed away with “No, a conventional tremolo with a single fulcrum point doesn’t work with fanned frets”, but I never actually analyzed it. The reason for assuming it would not work well is that the lower strings end up far away from the pivot point and are affected with more of an up-down motion than a back-forth motion that causes the tremolo effect.

However, as it turns out, the effect is quite similar. First, here is the regular tremolo, in its balance position:

Strandberg Tremolo Normal

And rotated 5 degrees:

Strandberg Tremolo Normal Rotated

And the fanned fret version, with the first string pushed forward and the sixth pulled back:

Strandberg Tremolo Fanned

And rotated 5 degrees:

Strandberg Tremolo Fanned Rotated

 

As you can see, the movement in the string’s direction is roughly the same for both!

So, I went to work and “hacked” a tremolo and my personal Boden OS 6 demo guitar.

IMG_0604IMG_0605IMG_0606IMG_0608IMG_0609IMG_0613IMG_0616

 

And the results are quite impressive! Here’s a fairly technical demo – we hope to follow up with a more musical one in the near future.

 

2 Comments

  1. hacking a kahler fan fret trem for headless operation might be an easier starting point as the string bridge point remains stationary. I’m over 40 now so my desire to divebomb is somewhat diminished 🙂

  2. Hello,
    hacking the kahler enthusiast worry trem with regard to headless procedure may be a simpler starting place since the chain link stage continues to be fixed. I’m more than forty right now therefore my personal need to divebomb is actually fairly reduced.
    Thanks