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Bass with a whammy bar?

#22
Well i think i'll chime in with my yamaha RBX170 "tremolo project bass." I used the hipshot trem on mine....seems to be working alright. My father and I did all the work ourselves as we have the machines/tools here to do it.

PC080261.jpg
 
#23
Eric Moesle said:
Years ago when I was young and stupid I had a Kahler bass whammy bar bridge professionally installed on a quality bass. The result was terrible.

It wouldn't stay in tune, ever. It was pretty useless for anything but radical "dive bomb" effects, and when you did that not only did it go severely out of tune, but it would snap strings at the bridge rollers because the bass strings were too stiff and would weaken at that point.

I know Victor Wooten has a whammy bar on one of his Fodera's, but for the life of me I've never seen him use it.
Click to expand...

He makes pretty cool use of one here at 2:20....

 
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#25
You can do a Bigsby custom, but you need a lot of room past the bridge.

bibsby.gif


In Favor of a Kahler-

Another trick in the bag
You don't have to use it when you play


The bad-

Expensive to add - $300 - $400 with installation & setup
Unneeded for regular bass playing
Decreases the value of your bass up to 50%
Irreversible
 
#29
Eric Moesle said:
Years ago when I was young and stupid I had a Kahler bass whammy bar bridge professionally installed on a quality bass. The result was terrible.

It wouldn't stay in tune, ever. It was pretty useless for anything but radical "dive bomb" effects, and when you did that not only did it go severely out of tune, but it would snap strings at the bridge rollers because the bass strings were too stiff and would weaken at that point.

I know Victor Wooten has a whammy bar on one of his Fodera's, but for the life of me I've never seen him use it.
Click to expand...

I have, and as big as a Wooten fan i am, i can say that the results were rarely good. You know how Vic has those awesome solos and then sometimes he has those solos were he just does whatever and it doesn't necessarily sound good... yea, it was one of those times.
 
#31
I've got one on my Acacia. It's Kahler as well

AcaciaCustom5_Bridge_1.png


I really dig it, but like others mentioned...it's an effect that you don't use all of the time but with a bit of practice you can really create some nice vibratros with it. Just like using a volume knob for effect.

I haven't had any issues with tuning or anything like that.

Here's some more pix...
AcaciaCustom5_FullFront_1.png


AcaciaCustom5_Body_1.png


AcaciaCustom5_Body_8.png
 
#35
Barkless Dog said:
rd.gif
Click to expand...

Two points:

1) You've got the same model Kahler in that pic that I do. I bought the bridge by itself with intent to install it on something, only to be stymied by the fact that it got the saddles at the front of the bridge, so it needs a bunch of space BEHIND the saddles, more so than your normal P/J bass.

Because of that, the bridge, which I think I paid $200 for, has sat in a box in my basement for 15 years. What is that bass?

2) The first thing I thought when I saw that pic was, "Oh, he's got a gizmotron" then thought about how rare that must be. All that's left of my gizmotron is a set of holes drilled into the surface of my Yamaha BB300. RIP.
 
#37
bassrique said:
I was asking about the TansStem earlier on this thread.

One could raise or lower the tuning and lock it in place [in addition to the usual twang bar stuff] with the TS? How'd that work for you?
Click to expand...

The TransTrem didn't work that great for bass. It was a huge pain to calibrate and you had to use strings that were specially calibrated for TransTrem use -- like double ball strings on their own weren't hard enough to find. So, usually the best I could get was to set it up so that a whole step down was roughly in tune. I had more fun with it when I put piccolo strings on it and didn't worry about the calibration.
 
#38
Someday I hope to build some elaborate custom bass, and I had considered adding a tremolo, but in addition to tuning, I was concerned about tone. To people who use them, do you feel like it really has any strong adverse effect? Nobody's mentioned anything, so I'm assuming it must not really effect it much. Somebody correct me please if that assumption is wrong.

If I had one, I'd use to to make obnoxious noise during breakdowns. You know, cause the two distortion pedals aren't quite enough.
 
#39
I have a new Kahler Hybrid Tremolo on my Ibanez Prestiege 4. Im a Vic fan and I wanted something close to his Fodera. I used to have a Fodera New Standard 4 with regular Fodera bridge. Im actually much happier with my Ibanez. It has a beautiful spalt maple top (one of only 30 4 strings with this top), maple body wings, neck through with gold hardware, gold Kahler tremolo, EMG 40P and 40J, East U-Retro preamp 18volts, Brass Nut, and the final improvement, Im having the fingerboard re-radiused to 16" with Dunlop Large Frets, instead of the Ibanez 12" radius and medium frets. This is already the most awesome instrument Ive owned and its about to get better after the refret. However, Im cheating on it with my (new) 1981 Alembic Distillate 4. LOL.
 

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