using a floyd rose

My brother got me a new Ibanez guitar - a $1000 dollar one and it comes with a floyd rose floating bridge. Other than it bieng a pain in the neck when changing strings and gauges - what can i do with it. Other than adding slight tremolo effects and dive bombing i see it as a waste of money...

Steve VAI does a cool effect: he plays a note, then hits the trem bar, and the bar shakes due to the springs, it sounds like an underwater effect, pretty cool.

Floyd rose were mostly made NOT to go out of tune. So you can do all the same stuff that you would with a trem, but except you don't have to tune everytime...

Thanx guys... But teh thing is that this is teh first time i'm using a tremolo system ... so what can i do with a tremolo .. does this site give any pointers on using a tremolo???

Well.. we got the bending part, the diving, the vibrato, cardriving sound and some effects i can't really describe(like Petrucci 'hitting' the whammy and the note shakes with the whammy..)..
Listen to some of Vai's stuff.. he's good using his whammy... U can make alot of tonal dynamic with the whammybar.. And, i bet the guitar wouldn't be that much cheaper without the whammy...

Btw. Playing with a whammy is totaly different from playing without one.. i've just started playing with whammy myself..

hey, there's a cool site for all ibanez rg's or other floyd rose stuff, it's a site dedicated mostly to steve vai's JEM, but it has a lot of other pointers including setup of it, and tons of other info on floyd rose stuff...
http://www.jemsite.com ---check it out