Tale of a Trem King

Some time ago, I decided I wanted to replace the GFS trem I'd used for my original project with a Trem King. It seemed like a great design and I'd read rave reviews from someone I respect. Since I'd always felt that the GFS was crappy, despite its working fine, I paid to have someone install it. I soon realized I'd made a huge mistake. First, I didn't like the way it felt, and second it made me feel like the guitar was less my own work. Perhaps the latter influenced the former; it's hard to say. But leaving that aside, I never liked the feeling of the Trem King. It seems very unresponsive and I can't get a nice shimmer, which is really my main use of a trem anyway. I can't remember what I was thinking at the time, but maybe I thought the Trem King would be my ticket to Jeff Beck land. Not only do I dislike the Trem King's function as a trem, but it seems the tuning stability is poor. It's really completely turned me off using that guitar, of which I had been so proud.

I found a few interesting posts on Ty Quinn's blog, Strung Out? Fret Not! Ty's first post was a review of the Trem King after installation, and the second described the process of ripping it out and putting in a nice 2-point trem. Ty was very responsive to my email, and very helpful. It's interesting to read the posts on the blog, particularly those from the Trem King guys, who were of course quite concerned by what they read. It appears they have a new version that fixes various problems, and I think it is quite likely that the one I have is the old version. Whether that's true or not, I've decided to get rid of it and replace it with a nice Gotoh/Wilkison VS100N from stewmac.

Since I had some trouble last time I installed one of these, I'm going to be extra careful, and my next post will be about how I'll measure and drill the holes for the ferrules.