How do you string your Floyd guitars?

[DalyTek]

There's nothing wrong with leaving the ball ends on up at the tuners. Functionally, it works fine, and as said, eliminates sharp points up there.

Personally, I string up my Floyd-equipped guitars the "traditional" way (clipping off the ball ends) but that's just for aesthetic reasons...I just don't like the looks of the headstock with the ball ends on there.

[skibob]

 

This is the way I do it, then clip the excess, or don't.

I usually put 2-3 winds on the posts so that if I break one during a show I can just unwind some string, re-clamp it and continue rocking. Then change the strings at my convenience.

[humbuckerstrat]

I do it like this. I do it like this so that I don't have to change the strings if I break live. I can get a guitar back to playing in about 2 and a half minutes. I just loosen the string, open up the block and put in the remaining bit of the string that still works, then tune and tighten back up. I haven't had to do it live yet, but i know that I can from breaks during practice.

[video=youtube;fXZj4Wy58Pk]

[cephus]

I generally come down on the side of hating floyds, but that is because i used a kramer with an OFR as my main guitar for 3 or 4 years of heavy gigging in the late 80s. I really liked it at the time, but I just found that I could get better results with a standard fender trem, once I figured out how to deal with it.

 

So floyd stringing. I changed the strings almost every gig because I broke lots of D strings. I did the trick where you unwind the string to stick it back in. It does work pretty well because the tension doesn't change much. Most of the time, the rest of the strings would be close to in tune when I got the broken one back up to pitch. However, if I broke a plain string, they'd have a little kink in them at the nut end and it would make open chords sound kind of out of tune.

 

The problem with having the ball ends on the post is that the last 1/4" of string is so stiff to bend through the hole and wrap. I also tried leaving a little bit of wrap at the bridge end to give the clamps something to grab on to. I found that it was actually more likely that the string would pull out since the end wrap integrity is destroyed when you cut the end off.

 

I ultimately found that although the guitar would return to pitch when I would go crazy with the bar, most of the time, I had compromised on the tuning to begin with because it was such a hassle dealing with the float and the locks and the intonation. Using a standard vintage style strat trem now, my tuning is much better because it's easy. The guitar is alot better in tune to start with.