I keep reading online that you have to lubricate the pivot points of a Floyd Rose to avoid them getting dull causing them to not keep in tune well, but many official setup guides like the one above don’t say you need to do this. I’d rather not do this because I feel like any type of oil will get messy, but I also don’t want to damage the Floyd Rose. What do you guys think?
I have a Floyd rose equipped instrument in my arsenal for over 30 years (same guitar) - Never ‘oiled it’. The thing keeps tune better than anything…of coarse…it’s also locked. The set up does need to be good.
Do you have any additional thoughts about the need to lubricate it when adjusting the action? (raising or lowering the pivot points) It sort of grinds again the pivot points when you are adjusting the action.
Even if you do lubricate the pivot points, the big rule of Floyd Rose life-extension is do not turn the mounting bolts while the bridge is under tension. If you want to raise or lower your Floyd, the best way to protect the knife edges is to completely eliminate tension between the knife edges and the mounting bolts first. Safest is to completely take the knife edges out of contact with the bolts. This means slackening the strings, and possibly even removing the springs from the back temporarily (but read below for important precautions).
Depending on the design of your guitar, you may be able to temporarily reposition the bridge away from the bolts without undoing the springs at the back, but I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s because you need to beware of the bridge potentially “jerking” as the string gets slack and the tension from the rear springs dominate. It’s best to use some kind of spacer to hold the bridge in position while you slacken the strings, then remove the springs from the back with the spacer stil in place (and gently hold the bridge in place with one hand while the other hand removes the springs). After that, you can move the bridge away from the posts/bolts freely without it getting yanked around by the springs.
It’s a hassle to get the height just right this way (you may need more than one try), but once the height is dialed in, you can leave it forever. If you want to adjust height frequently, a Floyd is a poor choice of bridge for that.
When the bridge is new, the knife edges are nice and straight. This means the contact patch between the knife edge and the mounting bolt is as small as it can possible be, with the least potential for binding. If you turn the bolt while the bridge is under tension, as the bolt turns it cannot help but grind against the knife edge. It essentially acts like a little low-speed grinding tool against the knife edge. Given enough of this grinding action, you can end up with knife edges that are no longer straight, but instead of small semicircular grooves ground into the knife edge where it contacts the post. This semicircular shape causes a bigger contact patch between knife edge and post, and creates more potential for the knife edge to bind when the bridge gets tilted up or down. You may not have severely damaged your knife edges with the adjustments you’ve made up to now, but the safest course of action is never to allow that type of grinding to occur at all. On the other hand, if you’re not too finicky about the stability of your Floyd, or you can afford to replace the part if it develops issues, you might decide that the convenience of adjusting it under tension is worth the potential risk.
Some bridges even used to come with replaceable knife edges, but they were typically a major pain in the ass to remove and replace. I never replaced “replaceable” knife edges myself, but I remember seeing a video of someone using a torch to heat up the slot in order to take advantage of thermal expansion to loosen it.
Once the bridge height is set you shouldn’t need to adjust it again for ‘action’…if you do it should fall into the ‘rarely’ category. If the neck shoots at the right angle and the bridge height is set well and not moving (e.g. if posts not well seated), then it’s the truss rod that will be your go-to for those seasonal changes when the guitar feels like it could use some attention. The posts should really be ‘set it and forget it’.
Anecotal, but my FR equipped guitar has never seen oil on those pivot points, it’s very stable and tuning is second to none.
I’m honestly not sure if it makes a difference, and I don’t bother myself.
I WOULD suggest, though, that if you’re going to lube your contact points, use a PTFE “dry” lube, rather than a wet lube or something like WD40. Wet lubes attract dust and grit over time and your contact points will get filthy, which kind of counters the point of lubing them in the first time. I’m a pretty serious cyclist and in most conditions use a dry chain lube - my poison of choice is Boe-shield T9, but any sort of dry lube like a Finish Line Dry or a Pedro’s Dry or whatever will work well - any decent bike shop can sell you one (even a not-decent bike shop) for probanly less than $10.
I’m also not super religious abotu taking tension off the bidge before adjusting knife edges, and it’s not ideal, but I don’t have major tuning issues or anything. Best praxctice is to not adjust under tension, but if you have in the past, don’t freak out and go replacing your bridge or anything.
It’s true of cheap ones. I have a cheap Ibanez with one of the cheap floyd clone bridges and the metal is softer than the more expensive bridges so the knife edges get dull and it doesn’t want to return to neutral float. Of course this was my first floyd bridge so i made the cardinal mistake of not reducing tension before adjusting string height and I’ve marred the metal quite a bit. I use unscented chap stick to lube it.
If you never adjust the Floyd’s height while it’s under tension, then lubricating it becomes a non-issue.
The problems begin when people inexperienced or new to the ways of the Floyd Rose adjust the bridge while it’s under tension from being in tune.
The reason the Floyd has such rock solid tuning stability is the knife edges. They must remain sharp. Adjusting the bridge while it’s under tension from the strings will dull those knife edges.
Since the knife edges are the heart of the Floyd, and the source of it’s fantastic tuning stability, dull knife edges mean the bridge won’t stay in tune as well as it used to.
So, don’t change the bridge height while the bridge is under tension from the strings!
Period.
EDIT: I just learned a trick that you can just take the tremolo springs out and achieve the same results, more or less. Point remains the same, though.