27 February 2013

Swingy vibrato arm fixed!

The vibrato arm on my Roland-ready Fender Stratocaster used to just swing around and hang straight down, which makes it hard to use. I like it closer so I can grab it more easily when I need it.

Some research online uncovered several possible solutions, but here’s the one that worked.

This little spring goes down into the hole before you screw the vibrato arm into it. I was skeptical that this would really do the job. Plus, I was worried that it might not work with my guitar since it is MIM (made in Mexico) instead of an American model, which seemed to be the case for some people. It seems to work just fine, though.

The annoying part is that it is likely to get lost whenever the vibrato arm is removed. Thankfully, it came with eleven spares, but it’d be nice if it was held in place somehow. There are some suggestions online about how to do that as well, but I haven’t tried any of them yet.

Well, now ten spares. I dropped one into my Westone Spectrum ST, and it just fell straight through.

3 comments:

KenHR said...

Nice.

I love the whammies on my Squier VM JazzMaster and G&L Legacy...but they often fall out when playing. Annoying, that.

Robert said...

Yikes! I assume those are the pop-in types with the set-screw to keep ’em from swinging? I used to think I’d prefer that to the screw-in type, but both kinds seem to have their issues.

KenHR said...

Yep, exactly.

I like the G&L because the bar is just a big, thick piece of machined metal, not fragile at all.

They always seem to come loose, though.

This is why I should stick with bass... :)