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Improving Strat Tremolo Arm Response

Strat tremolo arms are imperfect by design. The screw-in arm always has some play, making the response of the tremolo feel a bit odd and unpredictable. It’s not very easy to do the nice mild vibrato because there’s a couple of millimeters of the arm movement that don’t do anything and don’t put any resistance and then you get to the point where the springs start resisting and the pitch changes. But that sudden change between no resistance (and no change in pitch) and a lot of resistance always felt awkward to me. So I came up with a simple trick that noticeably improves the response of the Strat tremolo by improving the contact between the tremolo arm and the base. Read More…

  • About

    The idea behind this site is to share my experience with Do It Yourself approach to guitars, amplifiers and pedals. Whether you want to save a couple of bucks by performing a mod or upgrade yourself instead of paying a tech, or want to build your own piece of gear from scratch, I'm sure you will find something interesting here. Also, this is the home of DIY Layout Creator, a free piece of software for drawing circuit layouts and schematics, written with DIY enthusiasts in mind.