Tremolo Routing Options

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Kylef
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Tremolo Routing Options

Post by Kylef » Wed Sep 30, 2020 11:30 am

I recently purchased a Luthier-made Jazzmaster which I love. However it came with a Mastery bridge and tremolo, whereas I much prefer a Staytrem on my offsets, so decided I’d go with Staytrem bridge, Staytrem Collet, and US fender Tremolo unit.

The parts arrived and I tried to fit them last night, where I’ve noticed a problem with the tremolo unit - it wouldn’t fit flush! I now see that its the rout on the guitar that isn’t allowing any clearance for the setting of the spring. I’ve measured the rout and it’s 28mm, I’ve looked it up online to see that a standard Jazzmaster rout is 1.375” (nearly 35mm), So I’m someway short! Didn’t expect this considering the mastery trem was fitted without any problems.

So what’s my options? Best thing I can think of is to rout a hole for the spring? The spring looks about 16mm, so is it wise to take a 18mm drill bit and rout a hole for around 7 or 8mm? Can anyone foresee problems with that?

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adamrobertt
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Re: Tremolo Routing Options

Post by adamrobertt » Thu Oct 01, 2020 12:17 pm

Honestly you should just stick with the Mastery vibrato, they're a notch nicer than the (still very good IMO) US Fender units.

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skern
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Re: Tremolo Routing Options

Post by skern » Thu Oct 01, 2020 6:34 pm

Kylef wrote:
Wed Sep 30, 2020 11:30 am
So what’s my options? Best thing I can think of is to rout a hole for the spring? The spring looks about 16mm, so is it wise to take a 18mm drill bit and rout a hole for around 7 or 8mm? Can anyone foresee problems with that?
As long as you've measured the body thickness and are sure you won't pop out the other side, that seems fine to me.

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bodhi
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Re: Tremolo Routing Options

Post by bodhi » Sat Oct 03, 2020 12:50 am

Yeah, be careful with depth measurements, and do a dry run or to. Some / most routers should have a depth limiter, but the one I've been working with has the measurement bits a bit wonky, so I'd suggest not trusting them blindly. Depending on the routing bit it might be a bit difficult to gauge how deep it goes without testing first.

However, it's not going to be visible under the trem cover anyways, so wouldn't worry too much.
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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