Between dive bombs and flutter effects, there may be things holding back your tremolo’s full potential! We’ve come up with a few inexpensive and easy solutions to improve your tremolo’s performance.

Read how to up your game below.

Brass Block

Some tremolos come with a cheap diecast block, which hinders your guitar’s tone, especially your sustain!

Imagine how much wood was taken out of your guitar to make room for the tremolo. That’s a lot of wood. Now imagine having a cheap diecast block that you rely on for sustain. It’s not gonna do a good job.

A brass block is one of the best mods to do as it is such a major component of your trem. Replacing a cheap factory block with a nice, thick brass one will give your guitar a much brighter sound and add a hell of a lot more sustain than the old one!

If a brass block still isn’t what you’re after, you can even buy solid steel or even titanium blocks!

Change Your Springs!

You may have noticed that you get some string noise on your trem. This small nuisance can actually substantially impede your playing. Getting some noiseless springs is a very cheap and simple mod you can do  in a couple of minutes, and the payoff is huge!

I highly recommend Floyd Rose noiseless springs. I personally used these on a vintage MIJ Squier I had. The springs made an awful lot of noise even when I wasn’t using the trem! Changing to noiseless springs got rid of that annoying reverberation coming off the springs and made playing much more relaxing.

If noiseless springs are too expensive or too big a hassle, then you can always shove a ton of tissue paper into the trem cavity.  This method doesn’t work quite as well as noiseless springs, but it is still quite good.

Apply Chapstick to Your Knife Edges

Lubricating your tremolo’s knife edges actually increases their lifespan.

Some people don’t pay much attention to the knife edges on their tremolo, and that’s a big mistake! The knife edges are crucial to the performance of the entire bridge system because they are under constant pressure from being up against the studs.

Just add a tiny bit of chapstick to the edges and you’re good to go!  This is a neat trick we picked up from Rich Harris years ago.

Use a Tremsetter!

A tremsetter guarantees your trem returns to the neutral position every time! It eliminates unwanted flutter or sag and makes sure that your trem never goes out of place.

You don’t even need to drill anything to install one of these. All you have to do is put it on the same way you would put on a spring and that’s it! Excellent tuning stability in just a few short seconds.

Install a Tremol-No

Want to make sure your trem doesn’t move at all? Install one of these.

These are cheap and easy to install, and if you ever want to use your trem they are just as easy to take off.

Tremol-Nos are very effective for players who prefer to not use tremolos, or just want to take a break from them. Tremol-Nos basically turn your trem into a hardtail bridge, leaving all the neat features of a trem like fine tuners available for you to use!

They also have a setting that makes your trem only go down. This is useful for both increased stability, and being able to drop tune more quickly. Not everyone lifts up on their trem (I know I don’t often), so this can be very useful.

We upload new articles every day with great tips on gear and playing. We are also authorized dealers for some of the best brands, all of which have great trems!

This article was written by Mike Azernov, our editor located in New York.

 

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