I could be wrong but it's always been my understanding that the original FR were the ones that the two studs were not inserts with machined screws but wood screws with the bevel for the rose as seen heresusiwong wrote:Original means "made for Floyd Rose by Schaller" here, as opposed to the many licensed versions, promising top grade material (steel etc).hibidy wrote:It is indeed an "original" floyd rose. Hmmmmmm, like I said I'm kinda giving up but I'm DRAWN to that guitar (in many colors) for some reason.
There is some truth behind this.
The original Floyd, the Schaller and the upmarket Ibanez trems sure are built better than most of the rest.
Ymmv,
susiwong
here is the whammy that goes with it, no doubt well aged
The body in the picture was the one that was going to be 'scarface', note not recessed and this is not the whammy that was on it. This is the rose that was on my Kramer Ritchie Sambora from the mid 80s. However the rose that was on that body (an ESP body from the early 80s) was identical except black.
My first locking whammy was a kahler I put in my 72 tele custom in 85 0r 86 which was also when the washburn wonder bar came out. I can remember lots of debates on the three, I never recall a complaint about the rose not being able to be pulled up, but I do remember many people complaining that the rose was to 'light of a touch'. I always assumed that this was because with both my guitars from that era I did have have the springs very loose and the back of the bridge was quite high (the Karmer was not shimmed in the neck pocket and niether was the ESP until I got it and I did shim it) It looked quite odd and I remember looking through mags to see if the back end of the rose should be that high and I noted that the one EVH used was exactly that way. On the old ESP body guitar (with my first Warmoth neck) I had to use .010s (I prefer .009s) to give enough string tension to pull the back of the tremolo up but it still broke strings.
I remember that one of the selling points of the wonder bar and kahler was that when you rested your palm on the rose for palm muting you threw the guitar out of tune but not with the others. When the ESP had it's original floyd rose (which I still have as well) I had to keep a stock of high 'E' strings on hand because I would break them. When I had the kahler I had the same issue and switched to 'Stay in Tune' strings that had rubber reinforcements on the base of the strings.
I always thought the recessed rose systems were to make it more comfortable to play but now you have me thinking that perhaps I just didn't know it was suppose to only dive and naturally found a way to make it pull up (though that doesn't explain the Kramer). Two semi-tones seems about right as far as how high I could pull back. The kahler really sucked because the bars were thin and it was hard to tune (much worse than a rose)...twice I broke the bar itself.
We use to practice at an American Legion Hall, we had a full stage (with homemade risers and levels all over the place) and a full bar at our disposal (which meant why go out when we could have parties there). The first bar I broke on the kahler was while we were practicing and I hurled the bar the length of the room and it stuck in the wall. The second one I broke was while I was alone on the stage during a break at a practice just fooling around. When the bar broke my drummer was standing in front of the stage and dove on the floor...I laughed so hard.
BTW, if you're wondering about the hole I left in the wall, well that wasn't half as bad as when our power amp rack on casters sunk right through the old wooden floor (it had a CS1200, 2 cs 800s and a cs 400 in it).
