My "locking tremolo" doesn't lock.

Or am I missing something here?

I got a Floyd Rose... but I tighten the little nut thingy... and still, the arm flops down from where I put it.

I don't want to take vice grips to the thing and foul it up.

How do I get it tight enough so that the arm stays in the exact position that I want it to? I never ever have this problem with a Bigsby tremolo, which is of course a radically different design.

You probably just need to adjust the springs on the trem. It takes a lot of adjusting to get a floating trem like a Floyd Rose set up right.

The bridge itself is fine...

...it's the... bar? Lever arm? Whammy bar? The part that you actually grab while playing.

It doesn't stay where I want it to. I can't get it tight enough with my fingers.



That part right there.

Well... I guess I can infer that "locking tremolo" refers to the bridge and not to the arm, which is what I had thought until today. Yeah? No? :confused:

the arm itself dosent lock. you just have to grab it while you are playing.

not really good with whammy bars but i thought u can tighten it the way u want it by screwing it in tighter...cos my mate's fat strat works that way...

Oh, I think I understand the problem now....the arm swings instead of staying in one place where you put it...

There is a screw somewhere to tighten that. I think the screw is a hex screw down where the bar is inserted into the trem unit. Just tighten that screw and the bar will not swing freely anymore.


Yeah, locking trem means that the strings are locked at the bridge and at the nut.....the 3 little hex screw up at the headstock, those are the locks.

Nowadays I just press the bridge itself with my palm... but it's pretty hard to do a divebomb without the arm.

Here's a little scheme I have: weld some kind of weird flange/flap/wing onto the bridge that's always there... solid... one near the volume knob for divebombs and another on the opposite side for raising. Easy to grab... and yanks like a mo'fo. I wonder if that's ever been done? Would it foul up the intonation or something?



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Also, I notice on the SRV signature Strat, he had a left-handed tremolo (on a right-handed guitar) so that the arm was on the opposite side of the bridge where it would normally be. This meant that he would depress it to do divebombs and yank it up to raise. And it was up top... I think it would have rested on the bridge instead of flopping around like a hanging dang-a-lang, and was less of a reach when he went to grab for it.

That doesn't seem like a bad idea.

The trem arm should be loose enough to fall away after you let go of it, however if the arm rattles like my licenced FR get some plumbers teflon tape and wrap the threads of the arm once and screw it back into the bridge. This will dampen the play in the arm. If some of the tape is showing just pull it off with tweesers. If its still to loose, wrap it twice ect.,ect.

There is another solution... A bit radical, though. Measure the inside of the hole, or better yet, the size of the tremolo arm. I think it is M 6 or something like that. Then you take, uh what do you guys call it? The tool that you put inside the drill machine to drill holes? But not just drill it, but at the same time carve in, uhm, what the heck is that called then? I am lacking technical terms... You know, a hole with spiral thin inside so you can get a screw in?
Well, drill a hole that is a bit bigger than this one you have. And make a new tremolo arm. If done properly, when screwing it all the way in, it should stop moving easily. Just a thought.

You mean a tap and die set?

Originally Posted by: elklanderccYou mean a tap and die set?

Yep. Thank you, my man. A tap set, that is it. Here; I am returning the favour... Narezno svrdlo. In croatian. ;)

On a lot of them, the arm is not threaded, it slips into a collet. This is a socket that has a threaded collar on it that tightens the grip on the arm. It should be possible to adjust it so that it will stay where you leave it.

Mine was a bit sloppy, so I put some rolled-up brass shim stock in the socket to fit the arm more snugly.

Originally Posted by: flingerThe trem arm should be loose enough to fall away after you let go of it, however if the arm rattles like my licenced FR get some plumbers teflon tape and wrap the threads of the arm once and screw it back into the bridge. This will dampen the play in the arm. If some of the tape is showing just pull it off with tweesers. If its still to loose, wrap it twice ect.,ect.

NO MAN don't do that, I did the same extact thing in my dean (casue sound logic a semi soft material that fills in the space and it should be snuggy for the bar right?) well it's NOT, the only thing that happened was that the bar wasn't getting to the bottom on the hole and started to rattle with the natural vibraton of the instrument, a real pain in the ars, I had to clean it up with a screwdriver and now my bar still swings but it doesn't rattle.