Super Vee Double-Locking Trem Installation On A Fender Mexic

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 14 Jun 2012, 17:19

Hello everyone, this week, on Wednesday, I picked up my new Super Vee Trem System I had ordered online to replace my Mexican Fender Standard Stratocaster's stock Vintage Trem System, so I thought I'd take some pics and post a dropbox link to them here for anyone interested, I will also be adding a couple of before and after installation audio clips so you can hear the difference it makes to the guitar's tone and tuning stability:

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/Sup ... m%20System

sinner · Post by **sinner** » 14 Jun 2012, 17:26

DrNomis wrote:Hello everyone, this week, on Wednesday, I picked up my new Super Vee Trem System I had ordered online to replace my Mexican Fender Standard Stratocaster's stock Vintage Trem System, so I thought I'd take some pics and post a dropbox link to them here for anyone interested, I will also be adding a couple of before and after installation audio clips so you can hear the difference it makes to the guitar's tone and tuning stability:

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/Sup ... m%20System

Password protected

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 14 Jun 2012, 17:39

Ah bugger.....

I'll see if I can sort it all out for you Sinner....

Hang On, I'll try adding them as attachments....

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 14 Jun 2012, 17:44

Here's some more pics....

sinner · Post by **sinner** » 14 Jun 2012, 18:41

Sweet

SV trem system looks so retro charming. Fit's nicely visual-wise on strat.

Congrats Simon, I know you was waiting to buy it long time

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 14 Jun 2012, 20:07

sinner wrote:Sweet SV trem system looks so retro charming. Fit's nicely visual-wise on strat.

Congrats Simon, I know you was waiting to buy it long time

Cheers Sinner, yeah I was waiting quite a while for it, but I think it was well worth it in the end, I like the cool 50's retro-ness of the trem system too, but I also like what it's done to improve my Strat's tone and tuning stability too, I did not have to do any destructive mods to my Strat whatsoever to install the trem, like you have to with a Floyd Rose, the Super Vee just dropped straight into my Strat, the installation instructions were very easy to follow and understand too....

The next step is to replace the stock Pickups with some Fender Vintage Noiseless Pickups, and then I'll be sorted.....

sinner · Post by **sinner** » 14 Jun 2012, 20:17

DrNomis wrote:
sinner wrote:Sweet SV trem system looks so retro charming. Fit's nicely visual-wise on strat.

Congrats Simon, I know you was waiting to buy it long time

Cheers Sinner, yeah I was waiting quite a while for it, but I think it was well worth it in the end, I like the cool 50's retro-ness of the trem system too, but I also like what it's done to improve my Strat's tone and tuning stability too, I did not have to do any destructive mods to my Strat whatsoever to install the trem, like you have to with a Floyd Rose, the Super Vee just dropped straight into my Strat, the installation instructions were very easy to follow and understand too....

The next step is to replace the stock Pickups with some Fender Vintage Noiseless Pickups, and then I'll be sorted.....

Get the "blues" set from kinman

My personal favs

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 14 Jun 2012, 20:20

sinner wrote:
DrNomis wrote:
sinner wrote:Sweet SV trem system looks so retro charming. Fit's nicely visual-wise on strat.

Congrats Simon, I know you was waiting to buy it long time

Cheers Sinner, yeah I was waiting quite a while for it, but I think it was well worth it in the end, I like the cool 50's retro-ness of the trem system too, but I also like what it's done to improve my Strat's tone and tuning stability too, I did not have to do any destructive mods to my Strat whatsoever to install the trem, like you have to with a Floyd Rose, the Super Vee just dropped straight into my Strat, the installation instructions were very easy to follow and understand too....

The next step is to replace the stock Pickups with some Fender Vintage Noiseless Pickups, and then I'll be sorted.....
Get the "blues" set from kinman My personal favs

Cheers, I might look into that mate....

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 16 Jan 2013, 01:05

I ended up going with a set of 3 Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups, I love them because they do exactly what I wanted them to do, get rid of the anoying background mains hum, also the original pickups sounded a bit harsh to my ears, the new pickups got rid of the harshness....

Since I've had the Super Vee trem system I've experienced a few issues, some of the strings buzzed like a sitar when played open, plus also the locking part of the nut came a bit lose and moved as I pulled the trem arm up and down, this caused the tuning to be unstable, in my opinion the locking nut is the Achilles-heel of the Super Vee system, it's worse than the Floyd Rose locking nut since it pinches the strings sideways and makes them go through the nut at an angle, you can see how the low-E string is angled sideways instead of going straight through the nut, this appears to be part of the reason why the tuning is unstable, which is interesting since the designers of this system claim that it stays in tune with no problems, the only part of the system that seemed to work right was the bridge itself, so if anyone else is interested in getting one of these systems, I'd say don't use the locking nut they supply, a Floyd Rose locking nut should work much better, it's ironic because this system was supposedly designed to get round the issues involved with installing a Floyd Rose on a Strat.....

My experiences with this system was nothing like you see in the demo videos, maybe I was unlucky and I got a bad system, I don't know.....

Clonedreams · Post by **Clonedreams** » 16 Jan 2013, 02:42

Yeah to be honest Dr when i first saw that gigantic trem i nearly shat myself. It looks like its bolted tight to the body of the guitar and that little piece of metal bends when you use the trem. Is that right? And the locking shit is just total crap. Those stupid things have never worked for me, i gave up on those years ago. The reason i don't like them is because when you dive bomb all the strings go lose but, behind the nut they stay tight. Now one of the strings is bound to slip and then the tuning is fucked. The vintage 6 bolt trem is the best going around if you ask me. Don't worry about all these new Knife edged two bolt shit, you don't need that crap. I can't understand all the tuning issues you are having with this guitar. Maybe you have crap machine heads. My old fender Prodigy never goes out of tune, i can leave it in its case for weeks and pull it out and it hasn't changed and then play all night with just a couple of slight tweeks. I have a wilkinson vintage trem and gotoh 16/1 machine heads. I have it set up as a floating bridge which is a must in my book albeit when you break a string the whole thing is fucked out lol. The vintage trems don't like being pulled on, they are only really good for dive bombing IMO. You bend up with your fingers right, not a trem bar. Also the nut needs to be lubed with something. I use vasoline and pencil shavings mixed together to make a black goo. You only need a little under each string and you don't need to do it all that often as the nut becomes impregnated with it. Put the vintage back on and sell the super V. Good luck with it pal
Regards Johno

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 16 Jan 2013, 03:23

Clonedreams wrote:Yeah to be honest Dr when i first saw that gigantic trem i nearly shat myself. It looks like its bolted tight to the body of the guitar and that little piece of metal bends when you use the trem. Is that right? And the locking shit is just total crap. Those stupid things have never worked for me, i gave up on those years ago. The reason i don't like them is because when you dive bomb all the strings go lose but, behind the nut they stay tight. Now one of the strings is bound to slip and then the tuning is fucked. The vintage 6 bolt trem is the best going around if you ask me. Don't worry about all these new Knife edged two bolt shit, you don't need that crap. I can't understand all the tuning issues you are having with this guitar. Maybe you have crap machine heads. My old fender Prodigy never goes out of tune, i can leave it in its case for weeks and pull it out and it hasn't changed and then play all night with just a couple of slight tweeks. I have a wilkinson vintage trem and gotoh 16/1 machine heads. I have it set up as a floating bridge which is a must in my book albeit when you break a string the whole thing is fucked out lol. The vintage trems don't like being pulled on, they are only really good for dive bombing IMO. You bend up with your fingers right, not a trem bar. Also the nut needs to be lubed with something. I use vasoline and pencil shavings mixed together to make a black goo. You only need a little under each string and you don't need to do it all that often as the nut becomes impregnated with it. Put the vintage back on and sell the super V. Good luck with it pal
Regards Johno

Hi Johno,

Yes, that's right, between the part of the bridge that screws onto the body of the guitar, and the rest of the bridge, there's a thin strip of spring steel, it's about .5mm thick, apparently this is supposed to fix a problem with the original vintage strat trem where the bridge pivots on the six mounting screws, over time the pivot points wear out and cause problems with the trem returning to pitch, this is one of the problems the Floyd Rose trem with it's knife edges set out to solve, when you push down on the trem arm the strip of spring steel bends and straightens when you pull up on the trem arm, being made of spring steel there's very little chance of it breaking because it's very springy, it did feel very smooth in action to me when I had the Super Vee Trem on my Strat.....

I've got my Strat's original 6-screw vintage style trem re-installed on the guitar now, the original sealed Fender tuners had too much backlash so I replaced them with some vintage Kluson style tuners, this seems to have helped a bit with the tuning stability, but it still goes out a bit with even subtle use of the trem, so, I'm going to try replacing the nut with a new Fender LSR Roller-Nut I just recently purchased off eBay, I'm also going to try replacing the original bridge with Super Vee's Bladerunner bridge, and if I still have tuning issues, I'll try replacing the tuners with some Schaller locking tuners, I think the main cause of my tuning problems now is friction in the nut-slots (I'm still using the metal nut that came with the Super Vee trem system), I'm thinking that because the LSR Roller Nut supposedly is frictionless, that should fix things, I've just been doing some research on installing an LSR Roller Nut in a Strat neck, and having trained as a Fitter and Machinist, it looks easy enough, so I'll keep you all posted as to how it pans out......

I see why so many people don't like double-locking trems on guitars, they can be a real P.I.T.A to get working right.....

Clonedreams · Post by **Clonedreams** » 16 Jan 2013, 04:51

You do have the trem floating a bit above the body right? Try this tuning method. Tune all strings to pitch (obviously) but while doing so keep pushing the trem arm downwards in between tuning and rechecking the pitch. Don't push the trem bar until it hits the body of the guitar, that is asking for trouble. Only push it about half and inch or so. What ever you do don't pull on the bastard of a thing this will only cause it to go out of tune. Try it and see how you go. Keep in mind that vintage tremolo bridges weren't designed to lower the pitch of the strings by and octave they were designed for tremolo, even though Jimi had other ideas.
Johno

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 16 Jan 2013, 05:02

Cheers, I'll give that a go....

And yes, my trem is floating, I've set it so that it has about 1/8 th inch clearance from the back of the bridge to the body of the guitar as per Fender's recommendations, I also don't have any string trees installed either.....

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 16 Jan 2013, 05:46

Okay, I've tried that, but it hasn't made any difference, something is obviously stopping the strings from going back to pitch, the strings go back either sharp or flat, so I'm thinking that it's either a, I've got friction issues at the nut, b, the pivot points at the bridge are worn, or c, the tuners I've got installed suffer from backlash, or maybe a combination of all three.....

GuitarlCarl · Post by **GuitarlCarl** » 16 Jan 2013, 13:46

try this Simon...

It's all about tuning it the first time, it makes a difference! He also has vids about the floating tremelo.
I do this to my lefty Squier, that I rebuilt flipped to right handed.... It's been posted here before... She stays in tune, I also use nut sauce.

Cleaning up the nut so there's no friction does wonders too, so I think the roller nut will help you. I've also modded an Alvarez tele with a standard fender style trem, and she stays in tune pretty well this way, even with the fair, but not great, tuners...Peace, Carl.

MoonWatcher · Post by **MoonWatcher** » 16 Jan 2013, 14:23

I had an Ibanez Roadstar II in the early 80's. There was no locking trem, but the trees were the barrel style, the nut was graphite, and the bridge was a variation of the knife edge thing. It had really smooth sealed tuners, too.

Even after having the nut absolutely cleaned up to perfection by a tech with years under his belt, it still would go sharp on the 2nd and 3rd strings.

Part of this was exacerbated by a topside drop-in stringloading sustain block - the strings could wiggle around more than is possible with the Fender-style. But part of it also must have had to do with the slackening and repositioning of the part of the string from the saddle apex to its termination at the sustain block.

I put a Kahler locking device (not a nut) at the headstock, making sure it wouldn't add any issues, as the bridge had no fine tuners. That took a bit of work (getting the angle correct, and milling out a notch to deal with the guitar's bullet trussrod), but it confirmed that nothing was happening at the nut. The saddles were also elongated in comparison to the Fender-style ones. Despite their low profiles and lower friction contact points, this simply didn't help with the tuning issues. I think that the intonation springs and screws play a part as well, and if there is the potential for lateral saddle movement, this can cause problems as well.

That bridge also had the elongated holes to feed the strings thru, and they were keyhole-shaped to allow the ball ends to load thru from the top. I think it may have exacerbated things as well, allowing more lateral string movement.

I never got to putting a Fender sustain block on the stock Ibanez bridge plate. I could have ruled out how much of the issue was the Ibanez's stock block. The next step would have been to deal with the plate itself, if necessary.

I also yanked off the Kahler locking thing. Couldn't stand it, and glad that was all I ever invested in the locking trem stuff over the years. I actually got a guitar with a Floyd on it about a year ago (used, cheap), and just can't stand fiddling with the fine tuners. What is sometimes easy to forget is that when you are tuning one or more strings up to pitch, the others will go flat. So you bring those up to pitch, and now the first ones you tuned went flat. What should take one minute to tune ends up taking five, at least for me. I know there's the Tremsetter and other devices, and I know I should probably change which strings I tune first. But it's just a pain.

I am curious about the G&L bridges that lock laterally, the similar stuff by Hipshot, etc. I also notice that John Petrucci seems to have no issues with the trem on his Ernie Ball guitar. But he's got techs to tune that stuff, and I don't know if there's other elements to counteract tuning issues, like putting reinforcement material in the neck, doing things with the neck pocket, altering the neck angle, etc.

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 17 Jan 2013, 10:59

So, here's what I'm planning to do:

1, Replace the nut I've got on the guitar with a Fender LSR Roller-Nut.

2, Replace the stock vintage-style trem bridge with Super Vee's Bladerunner Bridge.

And finaly....

3, Replace the existing tuners with a set of 6 Steinberger Gearless Tuners that have a ratio of 40:1, (these are locking-tuners that exhibit practically zero-backlash).

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tuners/Guit ... uners.html

Clonedreams · Post by **Clonedreams** » 17 Jan 2013, 12:12

DrNomis wrote:1, Replace the nut I've got on the guitar with a Fender LSR Roller-Nut.

This should be well the effort i think.

DrNomis wrote:2, Replace the stock vintage-style trem bridge with Super Vee's Bladerunner Bridge.

Why not use the super vee trem that you all ready have? I can't see how the fine tuners are going to cause any issues.In fact they will probably be handy. Sounds like you are just throwing good money after bad at this guitar.

DrNomis wrote:3, Replace the existing tuners with a set of 6 Steinberger Gearless Tuners that have a ratio of 40:1, (these are locking-tuners that exhibit practically zero-backlash).

Just checked out a video on these things. 40:1 they say. 40 what? 1 what? If they don't turn how can they have a ratio of 40:1?
They look interesting but i think they are just some new fangled crap. The guy in the vid had a set on a banjo and it didnt seem like a 40:1 ratio to me.

And what about the nut?

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 17 Jan 2013, 13:02

Clonedreams wrote:
DrNomis wrote:1, Replace the nut I've got on the guitar with a Fender LSR Roller-Nut.
This should be well the effort i think.

DrNomis wrote:2, Replace the stock vintage-style trem bridge with Super Vee's Bladerunner Bridge.
Why not use the super vee trem that you all ready have? I can't see how the fine tuners are going to cause any issues.In fact they will probably be handy. Sounds like you are just throwing good money after bad at this guitar.

DrNomis wrote:3, Replace the existing tuners with a set of 6 Steinberger Gearless Tuners that have a ratio of 40:1, (these are locking-tuners that exhibit practically zero-backlash).
Just checked out a video on these things. 40:1 they say. 40 what? 1 what? If they don't turn how can they have a ratio of 40:1?
They look interesting but i think they are just some new fangled crap. The guy in the vid had a set on a banjo and it didnt seem like a 40:1 ratio to me.

And what about the nut?

You do have a good point there, about the Super Vee bridge I've got, that is, those Steinberger Gearless Tuners work differently to standard tuners, basically what happens is that when you turn the tuning knob, the tuner pulls the string into itself as opposed to winding the string around it, not that this is a straight-pull, I know it's hard to visualize, the link to the Stewmac website has some diagrams that show how they work, I think they're a really interesting design, I don't know why more recently made guitars use them.....

When they say 40:1, this basically refers to the number of turns needed to turn a tuner-shaft through 360 degrees, these Steinberger Gearless Tuners are equivalent to a tuning machine that takes 40 turns of the tuning key for the shaft to rotate 360 degrees, that's how accurate the Gearless Tuners are, in other words, well as far as I understand it.....

Cheers for helping me out with this, you've been a great help so far.....

DrNomis · Post by **DrNomis** » 31 Jan 2013, 02:02

I just got my new Fender LSR Roller Nut in the mail yesterday.....