ilovefuzz.com

Yesterday, actually:



It's the Stetsbar for stop tail....

And i would have loved to love it...but...it won't work with my gauge preferance (11.56's) - the springs won't allow for much range - that said - it was more than i expected. The trouble is - i went to pull up - and the sucker POPPED on my and bar went up - i thought i broke it - and i pushed it back down - snapped back into place - but after that it had this funky play in the trem - nearly a 1/4" of movement with no change in the pitch - way annoying.

ah well....back it goes!

Very interesting! Never seen one of those before

www.stetsbar.com

yah, cool concept. After taking it apart (to put the roller bearings back in) i feel it's not well built for the price.

Holy crap yeah $300 for a tele mount is tough

yah. agreed. I had the money burning a whole, the the price matched and dropped over at zzounds, so i popped for it. Really wanted it to be a reality! no bueno!

jeesus that shit is dope
im glad you just killed my stetsbar gas
i never woulda bought one
and always woulda wanted one
plus i use 13-56
so yeah
completely squashed
uggh that guitar is so killer

I am interested in a les trem ii but I also use 12's or 13's. Anyone know if the les trem has similar problems with heavier strings?

surry ryan!

no clue re: les trem - i'd like to know too. i don't think they have much range.

another bummer on the stetsbar - you can't remove the saddle to change to graphtech, etc - they are bonded in at the nuts!

I just recently put a stetsbar on a les paul of mine and i actually love it. I play 11's (though i guess your low end is a little chunkier than the usual 11s), which is supposed to be the biggest gauge they suggest you use. i haven't had any problems so far, though i dont pull up too hard

So as some of you know I play 12 strings that have trems on them. As such the search for a better trem system is something I am very much interested in. So far the best solution for me has been to mod a fender strat style unit with different saddles. It takes some machining to make it work and it does work well. BUT.....
It's a lot of work to make one.
It takes two bridges to make one. (dano hardtail 12 and aftermarket chinese trem that has a taller lip on the back where the intonation adjustment screws are)
It requires the guitar in question be permanently modified.

I was in touch with amorphous during his shakedown of this trem and was extremely disappointed when it didn't work. It looks so cool! and the concept seems like it could have been easily modded for more strings. 12's have the tension of a 6 with heavier gauge strings though, so a no go here.

My only foray onto a non fender stly that has worked so far was a bigsby.

Take one was to just add more anchor points so it worked with 12. Kinda worked but it was not so dramatic with the wiggles.

Take 2 was to add a sleeve around the bar on the B5 where the strings anchor. a little better. but still not perfect.

this is the start of take 3.



Bigsby B6 with the chet atkins arm. I plan on adding a larger sleeve and changing the orientation of where the strings anchor to give it the most range possible. I figure the different stlyle arm will allow me to change how much room it has before it hits the guitar as well.

With that said, as I started getting what I will need to do this, I had the idea of using gears to increase the range of play and having the axle rest on ball bearings to make it a much smoother operating system. This is completely theoretical at this point but the idea is to make something that will work with any tension, any string guage work on any guitar with no permanent modification.
Currently I lack the tools to make this so it may be a while before it becomes a reality but if anyone is a machinist, and thinks they can help, hit me up. I think I may be on to something here.

Man, i'm so hoping you come up with something. The Stetsbar looks like it would work in theory, but it's just not well made.

It's hard to believe that a jazzmaster trem could actually feel more substantial than another system....but it mine totally trumps this. Maybe i just need to route?

when i was looking for a trem without having to reroute stuff, i looked at the stetsbar, and all the demos i heard just sounded really lame.

i'd recommend finding like one of those bigsby mounting sets that are just like a chunk of aluminum that goes into the bridge holes. no drilling required and you get an extra like quarter pound of aluminum for toan

toan!

I like the idea of a bigsby, but i think my real love is the range that my jazzmaster trem has. Trouble is, RD body thickness won't allow....i think it's going to stay a hardtail w/ the TP-6.

i'm currently going round and round w. zzzzzzounds right now with the return of this piece of sh!t trem. buyer beware! fuck that place.

Ok, so an update on this!

zzounds would not take the trem back. Period. over. end of story. fuck that place.

So, i called Eric Stets at Stetsbar....he's going to exchange it for another one and personally check it out to make sure its right. Furthermore, he's getting some saddles from Graphtech and installing them on my bridge for free.

Lets hope this all ends happy.