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A lot of people complain that their foreign tremolo is not as smooth as the American ones. I have had mixed results with ones I’ve owned and I’ve narrowed down what the culprit was. It was the brass piece that holds the spring. It was causing the spring to bind.
If you have this one you are fine.

The one that is the problem is this one.

It may be nickel plated but it should still be made of brass as mine were.

So I decided I’d mod it to work. The first thing you need to do is remove the spring and brass end then thread the screw quite a way through the brass end. I did not take pictures of the process until after the mod was done so you’ll see the finished brass end in these pictures. Just use your imagination.

Next take the screw end and tighten it into a drill (I’d use a corded one if possible). Then use a standard file to reshape the brass end.

Before:

After:


It made a world of difference in two of my tremolos. One guitar I had already had the proper brass end and my modified ones are just as smooth as it is now. Sure you can buy the correct brass piece for about six bucks on ebay but six bucks saved is a good thing in my book.

Awesome. That helps convince my choice in buying a CIJ/MIJ versus saving up for a 62 AVRI. Although I suck at work like that and don't have the means to do it so I'll have to just buy the part.

With heavy use on the Bass VI I was able to get it to bind again so I ended up taking some more off to get it perfect. Still working great as pictured on the Jazzmaster though.

I'd really like a longer spring for the Bass VI. Any one have any Ideas of a source?

Great idea! Thanks for posting this.
In some other thread I remember somebody mentioning where they got their springs from. I just can't remember who and in what thread.
Not exactly helpful... sorry 'bout that.

Neat -- thanks for posting. I never would have thought of this.

I'll point something else out:

Flipping the spring over in my MIJ trem finally fixed this, after trying just about everything else (short of what you did, which is cool)...

Whether by accident or by design, one end of the spring was wider than the other.

I always knew it had to be something simple like this. Glad to see someone dedicated their self to figuring it out and to good results. You get quite a few cool points for this.

Just to add a little wrinkle, not *every* trem with the problem design is bad. I was curious to check my original CIJ trem (which I did replace) and it has that design... but I never had any problem with it. I replaced it because of the string spacing and because everybody said I'd like the AVRI trem better, and it was cheap. But functionally, my CIJ trem was fine. So I think maybe that design makes it more likely to bind up or whatever, but it isn't guaranteed - it's probably still down to the tolerances of the different parts and how they all fit together. But maybe those tolerances are smaller with that design.

Just saying this so people don't freak out and suddenly feel like they need to change this part even if their trem is working fine.

After doing three Bass VI setups this week, every tremolo had this problem, so I thought I'd bump for those that have not seen it.

The 2012 MIJ Bass VI?

Good info! Thanks

Good heads-up, thanks.

maximee wrote:The 2012 MIJ Bass VI?

No, 2 Squiers and a pawnshop

SneakyT wrote:A lot of people complain that their foreign tremolo is not as smooth as the American ones. I have had mixed results with ones I’ve owned and I’ve narrowed down what the culprit was. It was the brass piece that holds the spring. It was causing the spring to bind.
If you have this one you are fine.

The one that is the problem is this one.

It may be nickel plated but it should still be made of brass as mine were.

So I decided I’d mod it to work. The first thing you need to do is remove the spring and brass end then thread the screw quite a way through the brass end. I did not take pictures of the process until after the mod was done so you’ll see the finished brass end in these pictures. Just use your imagination.

Next take the screw end and tighten it into a drill (I’d use a corded one if possible). Then use a standard file to reshape the brass end.

Before:

After:


It made a world of difference in two of my tremolos. One guitar I had already had the proper brass end and my modified ones are just as smooth as it is now. Sure you can buy the correct brass piece for about six bucks on ebay but six bucks saved is a good thing in my book.

HI! I have a squier VI.....I would like to change the tremolo plate... is '62 reissue CIJ or AVRI Usa the same as a replacement in the squier? will they fit?
and...Should I wait to flip the bridge, mount new strings and set everything up..before to purchase a staytrem?
Thank you in advance for your help..

They are all interchangeable.