Staying in tune with a whammy bar

Gear
#23

One thing to understand is that strings never go SHARP from left hand bending. Pulling on a string ONLY causes it to go flat. The bar dive only causes the string to return to its original “zero position”. When strings have been correctly stretched and tuned to the desired pitch, the strings will never go sharp, only flat.

String tension is a one way street on a guitar that has been properly setup…there’s nothing you can do to make a string go sharp as far as bending or whammy bar use is concerned. Strings can only go flat from their original tuned position if your guitar has been setup properly and your strings have been stretched properly and tuned to their target pitch position.

#24

For a string starting perfectly tune, and with tension on either side of the nut at equiliberum, yes.

But, in my experience with the occasional guitar with a sticky nut, that second part is almost never true. So, if you have a string where you’re tuning it up to pitch, and the nut is binding a little… it’s possible to get it up to pitch so with a tuner it reads perfectly in tune, but there’s more tension behind the nut than in front of it, and aggressive bending can make your guitar pull a little sharp, because you weren’t actually at zero to begin with.

The solution here is really just to fix the nut… but if you’re having trouble with a nut sticking enough that you’re hearing perceptible drift on bends or on bar dives, then it’s awfully hard to know for sure that you’re really at equilibrium when you start playing.

I’ve found something like a GraphTech LUSQ nut and frequent bar abuse/heavy bending can do wonders to give you a good stable starting point… but that goes a long way to fixing a lot of the bending/bar issues anyway.

The whole thing is madness inducing anyway. :rofl:

2 Likes
#25

If you read the forum post that I linked above, I have covered the topic.

With all guitars, you have to start with having your guitar repaired and setup correctly first. That should be a given, but I always seem to have to repeat what should be obvious. Whether you do it yourself or if you have an experienced and qualified guitar technician do it, you must start with a guitar that has been setup correctly. And it should go without saying that also includes having a correctly cut nut that is properly lubricated.

So what I said stands…there is no way to make a string go sharp from left hand bending if your guitar has been setup properly. If anyone is unwilling to start from there, they are doomed to issues.

#26

…which is why I said step one is fix the nut. :rofl:

1 Like
#27

Most people asking about this aren’t starting from that point, though. Not because they’re unwilling to do so, but because they don’t know that they need to.

3 Likes
#28

Indeed! I agree with that’

#29

So decades ago I had a guitar with a Kahler, and it had an ingenious locking nut, where each pair of strings had a lever on top of them to lock/unlock in about a second. It worked very well, if I recall, and it made me wonder why people used Floyd’s nut with the hex tools.

This is somewhat similar, but unlike this (that seems to require a nut), I think that mine didn’t need a nut… I can’t remember, it was quite a while ago.