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Tremolo or hardtail? (self.guitars)

submitted 1 year ago by Crisps to c/guitars

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I’m considering a second guitar and thinking of going for a hardtail. I have a squire with a tremolo currently, but never use it because it goes out of tune, and honestly in a few years of playing haven’t come across anything I’ve tried to play that requires it. I haven’t seen one used in a single tutorial video.

If you aren’t playing Van Halen, do they ever really get much use?

I would buy a decent Floyd Rose, but don’t know if the tuning would be a hassle. Or if I went hardtail would I regret it later?

Other than some rock, where are these really used?

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[–] DadHands 1 points 1 year ago

I'm late to the party, but my views on the subject tend to differ from most people so I'll offer them.

The way I see it, a tremolo system can easily become a hardtail, but a hardtail can not easily become a tremolo system. You can install something like a Dusenberg system or a Bigsby on a guitar with a stop bar, but then you're just getting that little bit of warble instead of the range of a good floating tremolo system.

You own a guitar with a trem, but if it's just the 6-screw Squier trem, it's more like a knock your guitar out of tune device than a functional tremolo system. Certainly you can do a lot to help it, but it's really never going to perform as well as a proper 2-point floating trem.

I used to largely be a hardtail guy, but always ran into the problem that, when I do want a trem on occasion, my dedicated tremolo-equipped guitar hasn't been maintained in a while, the trem may not be performing as well as it should, the strings may be old and corroded, the setup may be out of whack, so then I just wouldn't use it when I wanted to because I didn't want to go through the process of a setup just for that. That, and that trem guitar always had different pickups, so I'm tweaking stuff to try to get the sound similar to what I'm used to.

Nowadays I don't own any hardtails. Everything has a 2-point floating trem. My main guitar is equipped with a Gotoh 510 and a Tremol-no, it can transition from a hardtail to a fully floating trem in a moment. Don't have to worry about difficulties with alternate tunings and double stops. Don't have to worry about a string snapping and throwing the entire system out of tune. Because it stays blocked about 90% of the time, but when I do have a need for a trem, it's right there. I can turn two thumbscrews on the Tremol-no, and it's back to floating. The trem is always in perfect working order, I don't have to worry about the setup being off or inconsistencies in tone, and I don't even have to swap guitars. Rock solid trem system when I want it, rock solid hardtail when I don't.

Certainly get whatever you feel is right for you, but I'd encourage anybody to explore a similar setup if they are undecided or only need a trem a small portion of the time. Or even if they don't think they'll ever need a trem tbh, because people change their minds constantly.