The Floyd Rose Tremolo - Part 1

The Floyd Rose Tremolo - Part 1

Floyd Rose is the organization that licenses, distributes and manufactures the Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo invented by Floyd D. Rose. Made by Schaller in Germany, the Floyd Rose tremolos are some of the best, if not the best tremolo offered on guitars back in the 80's. Even today, most "metal" guitarists will agree there is no better locking tremolo on the market than these trems. Floyd and Kramer (a young guitarist/machinist), worked together to develop and distribute this unit. In fact, Kramer was the sole distributor of Floyd Rose trems in the 80's, even ones that were sold individually (not on guitars).

The Floyd Rose Tremolo is a full (floating¦ tremolo, pivoting on two large screws in the face of the guitar body, that allow upward movement as well as downward. It was best well known for its ability to stay in tune even after the most demanding of abuse. The Floyd Rose tremolo, contrary to popular belief, does not require the cutting of the ball¦ at the end of the string. However, it is held into place by six, vice-like clamping assemblies, one within each of the saddles. You can string the Floyd by placing the ball ends into the Tuner on the headstock as a "stop" and place the other end of the string in the base unit, then wind. Its fine tuners also have much better access since they are on the top of the unit, just past where the hand would rest on the tremolo for the muted effect.


The History of the Floyd Rose

Picture a freezing Reno, NV, practice room in the dead of winter, and a Hendrix-loving, whammy bar-crazed guitarist whose '57 strat just won't stay in tune. "This has got to stop," he says to himself disgustedly, and shlumps home determined to solve his problem once and for all. "I started at the E string" recalls Floyd Rose, inventor of the locking tremolo system, "and noticed that friction at the nut prevented the string from returning to pitch. My thought was that the string shouldn't move at all. So I glued it! This worked, but of course it wouldn't be practical for very long. But since I was making jewelry at the time and had lapidary tools, I got some brass and whitled a nut with clamps that held two strings each. With that, the instrument almost returned to tune, so I figured the bridge end was causing the rest of the problem."

Although tougher to solve, the hitch was the same-how to reduce the friction caused by metal-to-metal contact? Suspending the bridge in midair was impossible, so Floyd tried drilling two inverted cones into the underside of the bridge block and balancing it on two sharpened pivot points. This was an improvement but adjusting the height of the strings now became too difficult. The third and most workable choice was to use a fulcrum system, where the whole bridge assembly balanced on a single knife-edge and rocked back and forth with an action similar to a Jazz master’s "floating" bridge.


Rose drew up a patent design using a Les Paul, modifying its Bigsby tremolo with parts cast at the foundry where he worked. For his third prototype, though, he wanted machined parts and was shocked when a shop wanted $600 for the job. "I was so broke my parents had to pay," he admits sheepishly. "It worked really well for about 15 minutes, until the knife-edge went dull. I realized then that I needed to experiment with tougher materials, so I started studying metallurgy; and, after watching Mr. $600 work I decided to improve my shop skills too."

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2

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