Acoustic/Electric Guitars

Can I keep the trem on my guitar in tune?

I have a squier stratocaster (affinity strat, $150). It obviously being of low-quality make, it goes incessantly out of tune with even the slightest tough of the Tremolo Bar. Is there any way I could use the trem bar W/O the guitar going out of tune, and without any radical changes to my guitar, i.e. a new trem system? Or would this be impossible?
The most I’d be willing to change would be the tuning machines.

There’s an old saying that my dad used to tell me….”You can’t polish a turd”. No matter what you do to that guitar, it’s still going to be a cheap guitar. So, don’t expect miracles.

That said, the first thing that I would tell you is to set up the tremolo to where it is not floating. That is, adjust the spring claw to pull the bridge back to where it rests on the face of the guitar. You’ll only be able to drop your pitch, but you’ve got a lot better chance of the guitar returning to proper tuning if you do this.

The other thing to look at is how you have the strings wound around the tuning posts. You should only have 2 to 3 turns on the wound strings, and 3-5 on the unwound strings. If the winding is scrambled and not neat, the strings will never return to pitch correctly.

Adding a lubricant in the string slots at the nut helps too. The best lubricant…graphite. Just take a mechanical pencil and “color in” the string slots.

The next time you restring the guitar, use Fender Super Bullet strings. They have a special ball end (that actually looks like a bullet), and they sit in the tremolo inertia block better than standard ball end strings.

The only recommendation I would have for changing the tuners would be to install Locking Tuners (like Sperzels). But, that would cost half of the cost of your guitar…not worth doing in my book.

Try the suggestions I gave you and see if they help.

Good luck.

Greetings from Austin, TX

Ken

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