Trem Spring Adjustment

JeffLeites

Mustang-Pete

My guess is that counter clockwise turning will straighten it up (looking down on it.) could be wrong though.

SmutVendetta

Are you trying to make the tension tighter or looser?

Everytime I've taken my guitar apart and looked at the tremolo you see that there's two grooves for the springs. I don't know how you go about to change them to fit into the other grooves, but I remember reading that, that changes it. Don't go messing around with it if you don't know what your doing, is what I mean to say, mostly because I don't need to be blamed for ruining the springs.

JeffLeites

I had it apart today, and it looks like the springs belong on the end groove. I'm fairly sure that's where they've always been because I never moved them, and they don't look like they would just slide there by accident. Anyway, my post about the tailpiece and grounding kind of evolved into this topic too. So just to conclude it here, I fixed it today. I needed to shim my neck to get the fingerboard closer to the strings on the tail end, and it was shimmed too much. That resulted in the bridge being so high that I couldn't get the trem adjusted no matter what. Today I started over, and hours later, I got the neck shimmed so that the bridge is low. Now raising the trem tail bar (I forgot which way you turn it 😡 ) lessens the spring tention, and the trem is nearly level now. It looks like all the pictures i see. 😁

Before:

After:

Mustang-Pete

Ahh, I see now, turning the posts raises and lowers the tailpiece, and doesn't change the angle of the tailpiece. I vaguely remember what Smut was talking about, about the grooves in the posts into which the springs slot. I'd try adjusting them if I were you. The tailpiece is looking awfully high now, so I'd try lower that too.

JeffLeites

I'll have it apart again today (except the neck ) so I can rub out the areas I had to touch up, so I'll take one more look. Yesterday I had a strong feeling that the springs were where the belong. If the tail piece is lowered too much, the strings will be touching the back of the bridge. Right now it plays well except he nut is too high. I don't think Warmoth really finished it off. I don't have a set of nut files, so I'll take it to a pro.

Mustang-Pete

Cool. If it only needs the nut lowered a bit, and it plays fine other than that then I'd do the nut thing and call it a day.

JeffLeites

Here's the bottom of the trem. It looks as if the springs could be moved down to the grove below where they are. There's no way they could have slid to where they are on their own, so this is the way it has always been. I'm I'm satisfied with the way it is now, so I didn't want to go through the hassle of trying to move them, reinstalling it, tuning up, and possibility having to take it apart again to put it back the way it was. 🤮 So I left it alone 😁