Help! New LIII string tension and bridge question.

[zerolight]

What's with all of the zombie threads lately?

Different strokes and all, but 100% disagree with this assessment. With a decked trem, you're "fighting" more spring claw tension vs. a floating trem, like is standard setup on a Luke from the factory (back of bridge tilted slightly forward).

I just stumbled on the thread when I was researching a possible Luke purchase. I shouldn’t have brought it back to life, I apologise for that.

But go try it, it is 100% factual. If your trem is floating you are fighting the trem. As you bend a note, the trem lifts, so you have to bend further, stretching the string more to compensate, and of course the further you bend, the more you have to also bend the string above. This all contributes to the guitar feeling stiff.

Decking the trem, ensuring it doesn’t lift, reduces how far you need to bend to get to pitch and consequently reduces how much effort that requires, making the guitar feel slinkier.

The only time you are fighting a decked trem is when you try to use the trem itself, otherwise it is completely out the picture.

 

[GoKart Mozart]

Again, disagree on the "100% factual" statement. I've got 4 Luke guitars and keep 3 of them setup in the factory bridge configuration and the 4th one near-decked. The 4th one doesn't feel any slinkier than the other 3 with floating bridges. To my hands, whatever extra miniscule extra effort required when bending on a floating bridge to make up the few extra cents is completely negated by the lack of the extra spring claw tension and is imperceptible.

A sample size of 4 is by no means scientific, but I feel it's a pretty good apples to apples comparison (identical frets, string height, neck relief, etc). I don't think you can make a blanket statement ("Wolfgang is slinkier because of decked trem") when there are dozens of other variables at play when comparing different guitars.

 

[zerolight]

Fair enough. We can agree that we disagree. It's been the case on every guitar I have ever owned. For me it is night and day, it's not an imperceptible or subtle change. It's the first thing I do on a Strat style guitar. I've done it to Suhrs, Fenders, Andersons, Musicmans, Tylers, not just on a Wolfgang. I've bought and sadly sold way way too many guitars over the past 4 decades.

Anyway, I won't drag this out given the age of the thread.

 

[Mace13]

The break angle has to matter (IMHO). As good as that explanation from Dr. Kev was (it was very good) it wasn’t quite 100% complete. The relative angles and positions of the strings, “string to bridge” contact height relative to “bridge to post” contact height. As the bridge dips into the guitar the “string to bridge” contact point gets further from the bridge pivot point and thus changes the relative angle that the strings pull with. Think vectors and how a force has a horizontal and vertical component.

Imagine having a 5’ long piece of twine tied to a stake. The twine is laying on the ground and there is a 2’ long board laying on it. So, there is 3’ hanging free. You pick up the free end of twine and pull it back, horizontal, towards the stake and the board doesn’t raise up. Now imagine holding the free end so that the 3’ of twine is 45°, now pull the twine along the 45° line until the board raises 6 inches. Some force goes into the stake and some goes into raising the board. Now hold the string so it is 90° and pull up vertical and the board raises six inches. This requires less force than when the string is 45° because all the force goes into raising the board, none goes into pressing the board against the stake.

So, back to the bridge…. When you bend the string and the bridge pivots, some of the force of the string bend pivots the bridge and some of the bending force pushes the bridge into the posts. So, now, adjust the claw away from the bridge (tighten the claw screws) and the bridge moves into the guitar body. Now when bending a string more of that string force pushes the bridge into the post (increasing contact pressure between bridge and post but not actually moving anything dynamically) and less of the force goes into pivoting the bridge. Therefore the sting bends “easier”.

Conversely, if the claw screws are loosened and the bridge is now sticking out of the body and now you bend a string, more of the bending force will pivot the bridge so you really need to bend a lot to get to that desired pitch (because the bridge pivots easier, and doesn’t just get pressed into the posts as much).

Not sure the above is 100% correct but as an engineer, it just seems to me like the string break angle has to make a difference for how easily the bridge can be made to pivot on the posts (horizontal and vertical force vectors will change, even if overall force vector is the same).

Gosh, this topic would make a good physics exam question.

 

[ruger9]

1. The less the bridge moves, the less you need to bend the string to reach pitch. A decked trem for instance will feel slinkier than a floating trem because you don't need to bend the string as far to reach pitch.

I find the exact opposite. A floating bridge has much less resistance than a decked bridge, it's easier to OVERbend notes, despite the fact that the string has to bent a little more to get to the desired pitch. Bending is much easier on my Luke III (and my old Charvel with floating Floyd Rose) than on my teles.

 

[Vito Porkleone]

To quote Chevy Chase, I was told no math would be involved...

 

[tbonesullivan]

I mean, there's a lot of things that are going to go into the feel when dealing with a floating bridge. Such as, how high up are the bridge saddles, and how many springs, as well as what tension / gauge of springs. I've been told that having more springs with less stretch results in a stiffer feel for the tremolo.

I honestly barely use a tremolo so I've had very little chance to actually experiment with things like this.