Noiseless tremolo springs and grounding

[nigelpkay]

Just figured out a long standing issue with noise and my Charvel. After putting in new pickups, changing my Floyd to a German OFR, and changing the springs to noiseless, I discovered a bad grounding issue. I checked everything, my wiring, the pickups, pots, grounding wires... could not narrow down the issue, it had been going on for months. One day I'm playing around with it and noticing that the noise went away when I touched any metal part of the guitar, so that meant it had something to do with the overall grounding. I touched the tremolo springs and nothing happened and then it hit me the coating on these springs won't conduct!

I replaced the middle noiseless spring with a regular spring, and boom, fixed. What a $!#$% pain in the ass that was... there should be some warning on them, or at least these springs should be made so that the ends that touch the claw and the tremolo block don't have the coating on them.

 

[skullfxr]

Damn. I will have to take that in consideration if I get noiseless springs.

Thanks for posting that. I am sure it will help many people in the future.

 

[Rick Lee]

Yup, happened to me too. But it only happened on two of my EBMM guitars and with the red Fu-Tone springs. Drove me effing nuts to track that down. I ended up sanding down the spring ends and it's all fine now. I have lots of other FR guitars with those springs, no issues. I have no idea how it happened with those two EBMMs and at about the same time. Very weird.

 

[splatter]

I don't get the noiseless spring thing. can you actually hear the springs when your playing?
All my guitars have floyds and I have never seen the need for this.

 

[cardinal]

I don't get the noiseless spring thing. can you actually hear the springs when your playing?
All my guitars have floyds and I have never seen the need for this.

IME there's always a slight reverb effect from the tremolo springs unless I do something to dampen them. The noiseless springs use some sort of coating. I just stick a Q-tip in each one.

 

[skullfxr]

I don't get the noiseless spring thing. can you actually hear the springs when your playing?
All my guitars have floyds and I have never seen the need for this.

IME there's always a slight reverb effect from the tremolo springs unless I do something to dampen them. The noiseless springs use some sort of coating. I just stick a Q-tip in each one.

I like it in strats, not superstrats, as odd as that may sound.

 

[cardinal]

Yeah, it actually can sound really good in lower-gain situations. But if I'm doing something where I need tighter, staccato licks, the spring noise has got to go.

 

[skullfxr]

Yeah, it actually can sound really good in lower-gain situations. But if I'm doing something where I need tighter, staccato licks, the spring noise has got to go.

I agree there for sure. Live playing staccato I would not do it without muted strings, studio it's different. The one quirk that I have is that if I am recording I record heavily staccato I will use a hard tail and not a guitar that even has a trem. I can feel the difference I honestly think.

 

[scottosan]

I use noiseless springs on all of my Floyd's, and yes, when I get them I scrape the coating off the points that contact the claw and block