Recommend me a guitar

[Chuck E. Jesus]

i really like the whammy bar..it's adjustable, so you can have just a bit sticking near the picking hand to do subtle vibrato...

also, found a vid of CSN&Y doing doing Down By the River with a battle of the Filtrons:

[deastman]

Gryphon Stringed Instruments
211 Lambert Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306

I don't know what it would cost but if you bought the Strat from them they would probably set it up for next to nothing. In fact, I think they set up all their guitars as a standard.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Gryphon! A friend of mine used to work just around the corner at Drapers Music.

[hibidy]

concentrate more on my tele story........

it's not a bu-fu tele, is it?



sorry

thank bu-KOO!



actually, it (they) were "NO" casters.......as in NO I won't get one that doesn't have a bitchin' neck pickup

[deastman]

I just stopped in at Gryphon on my way home and talked to their repair guy. He thought that putting in the Hipshot and the Graphtec nut were ideal, but he suggested that we start by installing locking tuners and also just adding some extra springs to the tremolo, which they would do at basically no extra charge. The basic setup is $65, which seems not terribly unreasonable, although I know there are cheaper places out there.

[Sascha Franck]

Regarding pickups: All my main live guitars are now fully humbucking and I don't have much troubles getting singlecoil-alike sounds out of them, especially not out of the G&L which has Fender noiseless PUs in it. They're a bit more midrangy than the standard strat single coils but they're just fine, though. A full set doesn't cost an arm and a leg either.
There's more expensive ones, such as the Kinmans, which use a sort of different technique for their humbucking, but it comes at a price. I'm gonna get me a Tele bridge model very soon.

Regarding vibratos: I found locking tuners to be extremely efficient, but Greg is right, the most important thing would be the nut. But getting it fixed or getting a new one won't cost you much.
Whenever the nut was right, I got tremendous tuning improvements by using locking tuners, even so much that I use them on non-vibrato guitars as well. I bend strings a freaking lot, so locking tuners are a godsend.

[Lunch Money]

deastman: sounds like it's a shop that cares about your business. If they have the right guitar, that's a great reason to buy locally. Locking tuners are cool also for quick string changes. No farting around hoping you have the ideal amount of slack for 2 full wraps and no more. I put the Wilkinson EZ-Lok tuners on a guitar, and they're pretty neat, too. Not really the same thing, and not hassle-free, but at least they address the string slack issue.

He's surely not going to give you the tuners for free, though-- that's just the labour. Decent locking tuners aren't cheap. Either that, or he's selling you the tuners and throwing in the labour for free. Since techs don't spend every waking minute of every day working on guitars, that's more likely to be the case. Changing the tuners is a 5-minute job. But if the $65 is the usual setup charge, they're definitely losing money unless they charge you for the tuners. Maybe they're willing to lose money for the sake of making money (eg. the cost of the guitar itself and your potential business for strings, future setups, etc.).

If you're getting the tuners, you might as well ask about the nut-- either replacing it with a Graph-Tech, or at least making sure that the slots are cut efficiently to avoid string-binding.

Greg

[deastman]

I would be paying for the tuners. He mentioned Sperzel, although those Fender/Schallers apparently would drop right in with no modification. He never did give me a price for replacing the nut so no idea there...

[deastman]

Okay, the Koa Strat has been ordered! The chrome version of the locking tuners are backordered, so I didn't order them yet. I'm going to bring the guitar by Gryphon for them to take a look at and talk about:
-Extra springs for the tremolo
-Graph Tech nut/trees
-Locking tuner

...and see what they say. I won't bother getting the guitar set up until I have all the necessary parts in hand, so that gives me until probably mid-September to just play with it as-is. Hopefully by that time I'll have a sense of any problems which need addressing.

Thanks again to all of you, and I'll post a picture when I get it.

[Lunch Money]

kewl!

[deastman]

After Sam Ash sitting on my order for a full week before shipping, and then FedEx being unable to find my house, I finally got my guitar!

Immediately after work, I took it over to Gryphon for a consultation. I spoke to a different repair tech this time. He was really impressed with the quality of the construction, the pickups, and just about everything else. He strongly felt that unless I was going to be doing major divebombs with the tremolo, I should skip the trem-setter and just add some extra springs instead. He also said that the nut on my model is already a pretty good synthetic, not too far off from the Graph Tech, and he didn't think it was necessary to replace it. He also thought my tuning machines were decent, and I shouldn't immediately swap them with locking ones. He said he would be more than happy to do any or all of those mods if I really wanted them, but that he strongly encouraged me to leave everything as-is unless I found it to be a problem.

So I left the guitar with him to do a basic setup, add some springs, and get the action a bit lower. Its all a bit bittersweet, in that I had the guitar in my hands for less than a day before turning over to them, but at least when I get it back (a week or less), it will be ready to go.

I'll post a picture as soon as I can...

[Lunch Money]

I like the way this tech thinks! Can't wait till you get it back.

One note about the springs-- when I used to have a strat, I threw 5 springs in there and just locked it down like a "hardtail". When I needed to add a bit of shimmer, there was still enough "give" that I could add it in-- but it was way too "tight" for note bends. Adding extra springs will sometimes take away from a floating trem's ability to "float". To me, that's not a big deal because I never use a Fender-style trem to bend notes up. Everyone's mileage may vary. Tremsetters are cool, but not "necessary".

[deastman]

He said he would start by adding one extra spring and see how it felt, and add more if needed. Because I told him I would not be using it to bend notes up, he said he would lower the whole mechanism, which I guess helps with tuning stability. He also said that the trem-setter really changes the feel of the tremolo, and it can be tricky to deal with if not perfectly set up... which can change over time.

[Lunch Money]

Indeed, if you're not going to be bending up, extra springs and tightening the claw is all you need. Tremsetter's not all that tricky, though. Setup in general is something you can do yourself (even fret levelling, if you buy the right equipment); however, I don't mean to criticize this guy at all. He sounds like he's very reasonable and doesn't get caught up in any hype. That's the tech you want to be working on your guitar, for sure.

[guitarzan]

Congrats on the new guitar, deastman - can't go wrong with a Strat!

Sorry to go a little OT again for a minute, but I just saw the thread again and remembered something I had been meaning to reply to:

i really like the whammy bar..it's adjustable, so you can have just a bit sticking near the picking hand to do subtle vibrato...

I looked into that - they are Les Trem Stop-Tailpiece Tremolos and you can get them at Stewart-MacDonald for $135 for the chrome one - looks like they work a lot like a Bigsby, but they'll bolt right onto anything with a Gibson style post-mounted stop tailpiece. Cool.

[Sascha Franck]

Let us know how it works out. Congrats so far.

As much as vibratos are concerned: I love them to death and my two main axes obviously have them. Couldn't live without a free floating one as I'm very often smoothly vibrating around the tone, something not exactly possible with a tremsetter.
Fixing it so upward movements aren't possible anymore obviously doesn't help either.
Now, WHY IN THE WORLD has no company ever developed something as decent as the vibrato in Steinbergers TransTrems for other guitars?
To those not in the knows (I'm not talking about the transposing feature here, which requires quite some more things): When you put the vibrato arm down, it would simply lock the entire system in its place, so you could do double bends, sustain was getting better, no more spring noise on staccato chords, no complete detuning in case a string breaks. In other words: f**king perfect!
Adjustment is as easy as it gets: You tune your guitar with the vibrato locked, then unlock it and adjust the spring tension with some big screw at the rear of the vibrato system until the tuning is identical in locked and unlocked state. A matter of seconds

Now, Wilkinson once came up with a similar thing, just that in order to lock it, an extension of the vibrato arm had to slide into some hole in the backplate, which was causing massive problems once you'd change *anything*, be it strings or whatever. Heck, even slight temperature changes could bring that system to a halt. In addition, in order to control the spring tension (something you'd basically had to do quickly after each tuning or at least when changing strings), you'd have to use a screwdriver, go through a little hole in the backplate and fool around with some of the screws holding the spring plate inside the cavity on the back of your guitar. Certainly the best idea when you have to pick a string and look at a tuner simultaneously, let alone that these screws go straight into the guitar wood, so adjustments aren't only sort of inaccurate but would also make the wood "wear out" after a while.
No wonder this system was a major flop...

So: Why did no other company come up with something similar and as easy as the Steinberger system? All free floating vibrato fans would just *love* it to death as it'd instantly eliminate all the major hassles that go along with such a system.
Right now, whenever I want to use my vibrato equipped guitars, I always have to have a spare axe with me, simply because whenever a string breaks, I can't even finish the tune. Alternatively, I'd have to use a non-vibrato guitar. That sucks quite a bit.

And fwiw, I still deserve to be slapped a lot for selling the Steinberger for what seems a laughable price...

Sorry for the OT stuff.