Custom HotRod Strat Build.

[DrNomis_44]

Luckily here in the UK I'm normally insulated from this type of thing and generally manage to stay positive, though I can be induced to make the odd negative comment.

FR type trems really depend on very sharp knife-edges to minimise friction and come back in tune. Real FRs and very high quality derivatives use a really hard steel, and these stay sharp for ages. Most licensed FR copies use a mild steel which wears down quite quickly. Once the edges get flattened, that's when they start to not come back in tune. Likewise when the bridge support posts get notched, the friction goes up and tuning stability goes.

So it's never a good idea to rotate the bridge posts to adjust the height of the trem when there is any tension on the strings. It's a PITA to keep slackening off the string tension adjusting the height, and then tighten the strings again, but you only normally need to do it on the initial set up. But it does stop the knife-edges scoring the posts.

You can get replacement knife-edges for a lot of trems, especially proper FR and Ibanez trems, which along with some new posts is a worthwhile investment from time to time.

It's also worth looking at the other end of the neck as well. There's often a string retaining bar fitted behind the locking nut. This is often set too high, and it should be screwed down so that with the string clamps loose, the stings are pulled flat across the horizontal face of the locking nut. This helps guarantee that when the clamps are tightened, the strings are held as tightly as they can be and there is no upward force trying to pull the clamp off the string.

Cheers mate, I used to own an Ibanez S420WK (Weathered Black) Superstrat Guitar, it featured Ibanez's then-new ZR Trem system ( basically a re-designed Double-Locking Floyd system) which used a ball-bearing system instead of knife-edges for the bridge pivots, Ibanez said that the new system included features designed to improve tuning-stability, well try as I might, I could never get the S420WK's trem to reliably come back perfectly in tune, if I did a dive bomb, the strings would come back flat, if I did a pull-up the strings came back sharp, I tried disabling the ZR system and the result was only marginally better, this was with a ball-bearing pivot system that should have eliminated any of the issues with knife-edge pivot systems.


@ FrankenWashie If you want, I could do a mini-tutorial of sorts, documenting exactly how I went about setting-up the trem system on my HotRod Strat, there's a couple of tools that will make the job of setting it up a lot easier, one is a special tool you can buy from Stewmac, called "The Key", it makes setting the individual string intonation so much easier, the other tool, which you can easily make, is a specially-shaped piece of wood which blocks-off the bridge so that it rigidly sits parallel to the guitar body, once the piece of wood is in place, you simply tighten the tension on the Trem springs, when I go to put some new strings on my Hot Rod Strat after installing the new pickups, etc, I will take some pics as I do the setup on my Hot Rod Strat, and I'll explain exactly what I do, step by step, hopefully that will be useful for other forum members who are building guitar kits that feature a double-locking trem.