The Glamorous Workbench!
Yes, folks, I'm back from doing a little soldering on my 40th anniversary Strat. The front pickup was ailing, a cold solder joint was the culprit. Contrary to popular belief, the guitar repair bench in music stores is the real place to meet babes! Yessiree, a real chick magnet...and I have recently "remodeled" beachfront property in Florida! This is the less glamourous part of guitar playing, but it's important to keep the instruments in good working order. I replaced the original tortoise shell pickguard with the current pearloid because I've never been much for the looks of that brown. They also have those mirrored ones for those narcissistic players who can tip it up to look at "the one they love" onstage-he he...This Strat is really nice, ebony fretboard, Lace pickups (the extremely quiet single coil ones, mine are all gold in this model). They make several different types. The color of the guitar is the really unique thing, it's a sublime looking deep bluish green with very understated turquoise specks that only show up in the lights. There is a certain name for this paint/finish, but I can't remember it...It's elegant, yet has a wild subliminal thing to it...This axe hasn't been played out yet, someday I will. It's such a sweet instrument, I played it acoustically and knew immediately that it was going to sound superb.
Since it's an evening in the "shop", the only drag about this guitar is the licensed Floyd Rose whammy (vibrato) bar bridge on it. It's sometimes called a tremolo bar for some unknown reason, tremolo has nothing to do with variance of pitch, it's a variance of volume level. Who knows where this stuff gets started. This bridge is a real dog--it's an engineering disaster! I knew about it when I bought it off of ebay, I've looked for a Fender/Floyd bridge without success but will find one eventually. It also doesn't exactly stay in tune...not acceptable for stage! Floyd Rose licensed bridges I believe have their own section in hell! Those who've designed them are forced to take them apart and put them back together forever...Floyd Rose came up with the original locking bridge design and it didn't have fine tuners. He consulted with Eddie Van Halen along with a couple of other players and fine tuners were added, thankfully! I had one on a Charvel (a tres cool guitar very popular in the 80's) that I bought and it was a nightmare. I actually had to tune my low e string a half step flat and then tighten the nut to get it to pitch! Then the licensed Floyds came out and I have to say, I believe there are more than a few guitarists in asylums somewhere due to the dizzying array of models. At one point I had three different bridges on guitars. Every one had a different design! The beauty of it was some of them took metric wrenches, some regular. Nothing but constant headaches, especially when you broke strings. Now if you were on the road and lost a wrench or a set, good luck! Up here in Alaska there weren't exactly fully stocked music stores in most of the towns we gigged in. Some of them were made of pot metal and stripped out. On others the bars fall out-nothing like playing a burning solo and have that happen onstage! I wondered if any of these had been designed by anyone who actually played guitar! Adjustments were often amazingly difficult and I've personally seen 7 different designs, including the Floyd Rose original.
Since it's an evening in the "shop", the only drag about this guitar is the licensed Floyd Rose whammy (vibrato) bar bridge on it. It's sometimes called a tremolo bar for some unknown reason, tremolo has nothing to do with variance of pitch, it's a variance of volume level. Who knows where this stuff gets started. This bridge is a real dog--it's an engineering disaster! I knew about it when I bought it off of ebay, I've looked for a Fender/Floyd bridge without success but will find one eventually. It also doesn't exactly stay in tune...not acceptable for stage! Floyd Rose licensed bridges I believe have their own section in hell! Those who've designed them are forced to take them apart and put them back together forever...Floyd Rose came up with the original locking bridge design and it didn't have fine tuners. He consulted with Eddie Van Halen along with a couple of other players and fine tuners were added, thankfully! I had one on a Charvel (a tres cool guitar very popular in the 80's) that I bought and it was a nightmare. I actually had to tune my low e string a half step flat and then tighten the nut to get it to pitch! Then the licensed Floyds came out and I have to say, I believe there are more than a few guitarists in asylums somewhere due to the dizzying array of models. At one point I had three different bridges on guitars. Every one had a different design! The beauty of it was some of them took metric wrenches, some regular. Nothing but constant headaches, especially when you broke strings. Now if you were on the road and lost a wrench or a set, good luck! Up here in Alaska there weren't exactly fully stocked music stores in most of the towns we gigged in. Some of them were made of pot metal and stripped out. On others the bars fall out-nothing like playing a burning solo and have that happen onstage! I wondered if any of these had been designed by anyone who actually played guitar! Adjustments were often amazingly difficult and I've personally seen 7 different designs, including the Floyd Rose original.
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