Another Floyd Rose tip

[ashasha]

You can skip to the bold part if you want to get to the actual tip and skip the backstory. I know I'm long winded.

 

I just got done ripping my N4 apart last night to try to figure out why it wouldn't return to pitch no matter what. I know how to balance a floyd rose correctly and I've got many tricks up my sleeve and understand how it functions so it's not noobie crap here. I've been playing and fixing these things for damn near 20 years with a lot of success.

 

So it would drift almost 50 cents between returning from any kind of dive or a pull up (and I mean just breathing on it).

 

A floyd rose is easy to dial in with a few things kept in mind.

 

1. The spring to string tension is critical to maintain correct balance

2. The kinfe edges on the fulcrum and the pivot points of the trem posts must be smooth

3. The nut must be locked properly

4. The trem posts must be stable

5. The tremolo base should be parallel to the body of the guitar in the neutral position

 

I had all of this going for me except for #4 which is an easy fix. I pulled the posts (after measuring the height so that I can maintain my action) and put teflon tape around them. I've done this to many trems.

 

Didn't fix the problem.

 

I checked everything else and all was fine. The balance and position of the tremolo was right (on paper), but I could almost see the difference between where it would return with pulls or dives. The zero point wasn't working for whatever reason.

 

Now it's not an OFR, but it's a pretty well made Washburn one and it's basically new. There was absolutely no reason for it not to work. I lubed the trem posts at the fulcrum point and did a full setup. No dice.

 

So I decided to change the neutral point just a bit in favor of the springs. Basically I balanced it by making the neutral point the same point as if you were pulling up on it just a bit (not much at all, probably about .5mm). Made all the difference in the world; I can go back to being an idiot on this thing and it returns to pitch perfectly.

 

The only thing that I can think of is that the neutral point was just too flat and the springs just couldn't overcome that specific point. Perhaps moving the trem claw screws to where the spring angle is sharper would help with leverage, but for right now it's fine.

 

Just thought that it may help someone else.

[cephus]

That's a pretty good idea, actually. I have an old 100,000 mile OFR on a kramer that I thought was unusable. This might work.

[shioks76]

i have a n6 that had the same issues as yours. i changed all saddles to graphtech, didn't work either. So was pretty fed up and just replaced the entire bridge with a gotoh floyd. Solved the tuning issues and intonation was perfect for 9-42 gauge strings right out of the box.

 

installation problems:

The posts won't retrofit, so had to reuse the schaller by washburn posts.

The routing is a little too short so i can dive but can't pull up now. Not too much of an issue for me as i hardly do that.

[wartoxin]

I fixed my zero point issues just by cleaning and lubricating the contacts. It was a (cheapish) black hardware one which is clearly part of my problem. I was surprised that was all it took to fix it though.