2005 May | Acoustic Electric Guitar

Stratocaster Tremolo

Posted in Guitar Parts & Accessories by admin on May 31, 2005

Stratocaster Tremolo

This whole process isn’t as hard as people make it out to be – even those dudes in stores try to over complicate it and sell you something more expensive than you really need. Your first electric guitar really doesn’t have to be great, just good. The first thing most people look for when buying a guitar is the shape and color – don’t feel bad, just know that it’s not all about a sexy lookin’ guitar. Chances are, once you get playing you’re going to replace your first guitar with a new, better one anyway… usually within a year or a little over a year people will grab a new one.

The first point I really wanna’ drill home is that it doesn’t need to be expensive; expensive isn’t always better. But in the case of your first electric guitar, it REALLY doesn’t need to be expensive. $200-$300 USD tops. The reason you shouldn’t start out any more expensive is that you can’t guarantee you’re going to stick with it. If you decide to quit playing you’ll at least get a nice chunk of that cash back when you sell it.

You can say “oh I’m going to stick with it, guitar is awesome!”… that’s all fine and good but the fact is not everyone is meant to be a musician. I’m not being negative, I’m being real. The good news is once you make it past about 6 months of playing you’ve surpassed the “honeymoon phase”… once you do that there’s a pretty good chance you’re never going to give it up.

Okay, so with all that good stuff out of the way there are literally just three things you’ll need to look for when choosing a guitar… the first one I already mentioned; the price. The next thing to look for is the pickup configuration.

The choice of pickup configuration will depend on the style of music you want to play, really. I guess I should explain what a pickup config is first, right? My bad. The two most common types of pickups are single coils and humbuckers. Single coils are what you’ll usually find in a Fender Strat (among many other guitars) – the pickup is one small coil. If you still have no idea what I’m talking about, go Google the term “single coil” using their super-fancy image search.

Humbuckers are basically two single coils side by side – sometimes they’ll have a case overtop of them. You’ll usually find humbuckers in a Gibson Les Paul (among many other guitars).

So how do you know which to get? Look at the guitars of players you like and get what they’ve got… that’s usually the easiest way. The reality is you can play any kind of music on any kind of pickup – some just sound better than others. Then again, what “sounds good” all depends on the person. The one thing that remains a fact is that single coils sound thinner than humbuckers – naturally though right? I mean a humbucker is TWO single coils… kind of a no-brainer. You can also split some humbuckers using what we cal a coil tap switch… blah, another article for another day.

So once you know the price range and you know what type of pickups you want, what’s the third thing? Why it’s the tremolo or bridge!

The tremolo or bridge is the fancy little contraption at the end of the body of the guitar. The thing the strings go through or into. So how do you know which is tremolo and which is a bridge? Well a tremolo will have a “whammy bar”… I hate that terminology but most people identify with it better. The proper term is “tremolo bar” or “tremolo arm”. There are multiple kinds of tremolos.

One type of tremolo is the Floyd Rose, easily the best in my opinion. With a Floyd, you can both raise and lower the pitch. This is ideal for people who want to do divebombs like it’s no bodies business or rip out squeels like “Dimebag” Darrell. That’s to their awesome construction and locking nut, tuning stability is pretty good.

Another type of tremolo is usually called the “Vintage” tremolo. With this, there is no locking nut and you can only lower the pitch with the bar, not raise it. You’ll find these on the majority of Fender Stratocasters.

There’s also a few others like the Bigsby but I doubt you’ll find that on a budget model guitar. Oh and there’s some tremolos that are similar to the Floyd Rose in design, like Ibanez’s Edge III, etc.

Now, a fixed bridge is exactly that – fixed. There’s no tremolo bar, just your fingers and strings. You’ll find these on the majority of Gibson Les Paul’s, although I think they did have some limited runs with Floyd Rose tremolos.

So how do you know which to get? Again, look at your favorite guitar players; do they use a tremolo? If you don’t know the sound of a divebomb or pull up, go listen to some Van Halen and Pantera. For an example of a divebomb, listen to “Eruption” by Van Halen. For an example of a pull up, go listen to “Cemetery Gates” by Pantera, the very end of the tune is filled with them.

There you have it; you’re ready to purchase your first electric guitar!

Keep rockin’ (or start!), and if you have any other questions, click here: http://www.farowt.com/opt/bgui01/index.php [http://www.farowt.com/opt/bgui01/index.php?t=4EB1A].