Generic JM Tremolos

[adamrobertt]

How are these? The ones that Allparts/WD Music/Stewmac carry? Looks just like a regular JM vibrato but with no branding or trem lock. Are they junk? I assume they're all from the same supplier? I'm trying a budget build and I also kind of like the idea of no trem lock button...

[Danley]

Let’s just say I haven’t had good luck - but others have had no issue.

[Embenny]

Used a stewmac one 10 years ago on a build and had no issue. No trem lock but I'm a heathen who has never used that feature on any of the dozen guitars I've owned that had one.

[adamrobertt]

Used a stewmac one 10 years ago on a build and had no issue. No trem lock but I'm a heathen who has never used that feature on any of the dozen guitars I've owned that had one.

I think most people want the trem lock for the vintage look anyway... I never found it particularly useful either.

[Danley]

Without the trem lock, putting on new strings requires a lot of cranking, cranking, re-cranking. Yeah you can change them one by one - but actually, I wind up removing them entirely for things like pickup/wiring changes at least as frequently as I do regular string changes anyway.

The trem lock is also useful if you want to go to drop D without retuning every other string.

That’s not the reason I’ve had bad luck with the generic vibratos though, which is due to them being unstable, clicking, not staying in tune etc. I’ve had at least four of these, and all of them required me to file the pivot to correct the issue. But again- I guess I just have bad luck.