Never Enough: The Custom Floyd Rose Dilemma

Let's get this out of the way: throughout most of this process I've stalled on the decision to order the body with the recessed pocket for a fully-floating Floyd Rose bridge setup, or an angled pocket for a top-mounted dive-only setup.  Then I tested out the Eddie Van Halen D-Tuna in conjunction with the Tremol-No in a best-of-both-worlds scenario, and neither piece could perform as I would have needed it to.  The question remained left open—which bridge setup to choose?  Full float means notes can be raised as well as lowered, but the maintenance on it can be a royal pain in the arse as the spring tension has to be balanced with the string tension.  The angled-pocket top-mount style only allows for notes to be lowered, BUT there's far less maintenance required so long as there's enough tension in the springs to pull the bridge against the body.  I should also note here that dropping from a low E to D would be much easier as [hypothetically] I'd only need to unlock the nut and detune from the peg.

Google image search: the angled pocket rout results in the bridge resting on the top of the body.

This has turned out to be the single most headache-inducing detail of the design phase of the build.  [Notice how I said design phase; I have yet to actually assemble this thing!]  After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that I will be going with the recessed pocket for full-float capability.  I've had over four years of practice playing and working on Floyd Rose bridges on two Jackson guitars I've owned, and I love the stability they offer.  Also, as far as using vibrato goes, I tend toward a balanced approach by lightly lowering and raising around the note or chord I'm playing; not simply by pulling down on the trem arm.  Implementing this capability along with the Sustainiac's infinite feedback function just feels like the right thing to do.

Google image search: This is actually not very off from what I'm going for, except, of course, the maple neck, black hardware, dual humbuckers, and two knobs that I want.

Let's move on.

So I found out by mistake, sort of, that the Floyd Rose website offers upgrades and replacement parts for existing bridges, and even has a custom-order form for building a bridge from the ground up.  The most common upgrade is the tone block.  It's the center of mass upon which the sustaining action of plucking a guitar string happens.  I have to admit, I've ignored this key fact for as long as I've had Floyd-equipped guitars and therefore never thought to try anything different.  The site offers tone blocks made out of materials like brass, tungsten, stone, and titanium, each with different resonant properties.  I am FASCINATED with the new possibilities here.

Google image search: brass sustain block upgrade shown on the underside of the bridge.  This will be entirely hidden when it's installed in the guitar.  Also, for some reason this photo reminds me of spiders.  A lot.

Just for kicks, I decided to run through the custom order form on the site to see what I could come up with, and...  The cost ran up over $400 for what I felt was a modest bridge setup with an R3 nut.  Surprisingly, their stone sustain block is one of the most expensive available.  The "original" Floyd Rose bridge runs for $215-240 on Musician's Friend.  I could still go way over the top and order titanium for the base plate ($450), saddle set ($411), locking nut ($305), etc.  Can you say, CHA-CHING!!!

There could be some real performance differences by upgrading each of these individual components, but there's an element of restraint pressing in on my brain.  Will it make that much of a difference, really?  Just how much will it take before I'm satisfied with the result?  The quest for tone is a stalwart one, and wrought with much fear over never quite being able to reach that golden sound that's in our ears, and loss of gold [money] chasing after it.  After being lost in the fog for a while, though, we need to be reeled back in by Zappa's tender maxim, SHUT UP 'N PLAY YER GUITAR.  Turn up an amp to volume eleven, put a foot up on the monitor, and hit that power chord as hard as you can.  Because no one but you, and maybe your one or two guitar nerd buddies, can tell the tonal difference between a $500 guitar and a $5,000 guitar.

I'm now ready to order the body of Big Riff, but it's sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario.  Warmoth will install the studs for the Floyd Rose if I send them over with my order.  I'd rather order the body first, since it's the next most expensive part of the build, but it looks like I need to figure out how I'll purchase the Floyd bridge before I do anything else.

There's a lot of rad stuff going on, particularly with full-time school being completely covered financially, but man, I've got some major feels these days.

Liberating The Fingers: Strat Knob Placement

Having the finished neck with me here at home has been a joy even though I can't play on it yet.  It just looks great and helps to solidify the notion that this guitar build thing is actually happening...  Because, you know, it is actually happening.  Anyway, I've got the neck sitting in my lap as I type this and the little birdies are smiling up at me.  Hi there!

But down to business.  In my Contrasts And Components post, I presented an image of the body of the Strat with the paint job done and hardware installed on it:

Body of Big Riff, Version 1.0.

But over time, I've gazed disdainfully upon the classic Strat design's one glaring error: that volume knob sitting RIGHT next to where the high E string would be strung, and so close to the bridge that it hinders palm muting.  I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier.  I guess I was so bent on getting the neck and the Floyd Rose setup right (more on that in a later post) that it slipped my mind.

I'm pretty sure Leo Fender didn't stop and think, "You know, I bet there will come a day when players want to play very fast and pluck the strings while muting them near the bridge with their palm, with loads of gain screaming out of their amplifiers at high volume.  I should probably just do away with one of these three knobs so that those kinds of players can totally go for it and still buy my brand thirty to sixty years in the future!"

Note to guitar manufacturers everywhere: KEEP THE DAMN KNOBS AWAY FROM THE STRINGS.  I'm tired of hitting them with my knuckles when my right hand fingers are curled in.  I'm also tired of second-guessing that the volume is still all the way up when I have to curl my ring and pinky fingers around the knob when they're flared out.

Palm Mute Exhibit A: Fingers curled in for faster licks.  Knuckles make contact with the volume knob.

Palm Mute Exhibit B: Fingers flared out to help anchor the hand down for more expressive, heavier-handed "chunk".  Too easy to grab the knob and turn it by accident, pulling volume down.

I may be the tweaker type when it comes to amp and pedal settings, but I never need more than a volume and a tone knob on a guitar, and a three-way selector switch.  Well, except for this one thing that's specific to Big Riff: There is an option to wire a knob to act as the driver control for the Sustainiac pickup when it's turned on. Perhaps I thought that I would keep the Strat's three knobs and utilize one of them for this driver controller, which I truly would like to have available on the top of the guitar if possible.

So I want the function of three knobs in two spaces.  What to do?  The answer may lie in the function of the concentric potentiometer.  Basically, it means two pots are crammed together, one on top of the other, with separate terminal sets for wiring.  I've never owned a guitar with one installed but they are common enough:

But of course I'm going with black.

I assume that I would simply put the guitar's volume and tone control functions together on the same concentric pot, but I haven't explored what else I could do with it yet.  I need to put in some research on rating (I'm assuming I'll need 500K) and the depth on the bottom side so it would mount properly to the pickguard without space complications underneath.

To be clear, I am not fond of and have no plans to use push-pull pots, either for the function of splitting the Duncan Distortion to a single-coil (had that on a Schecter in the past and never used it) or for turning the Sustainiac driver on and off.  I want two small switches mounted on the pickguard near the pickup selector: one for the on/off toggle, and the other for the regular/5th harmonic mode toggle.

Body of Big Riff, Version 2.0.  Two knobs.

I thought that I had completed the design phase of the guitar build and would simply move on to the purchasing and assembly phases, but I see now that the design functions of this process remain interwoven into the others.  There is still time to make miniscule changes, with the exception of the final decision of what to do with the Floyd Rose bridge as it affects the body design.  I may have a window of opportunity to order the body in either October or November, so the next post will be devoted to declaring once and for all what I'll do.

Seahawks football opened with a bang this past week and there was a free concert by Century Link Field with Soundgarden and Pharrell Williams (how in the world does that happen?).  My girlfriend and I were in downtown near the action that day but we missed the show.  Anyway, I kept jokingly singing "Rusty Cage" at her and wound up falling in love with the song all over again: