AVRI trem, occasional pop/snap and strings go out of tune

[alexpigment]

Don’t block the bridge from rocking.

What's this in reference to? I'm not sure if/where this was mentioned above. To be clear, the bridge rocks as god intended.

[B.T.]

Don’t block the bridge from rocking.

What's this in reference to? I'm not sure if/where this was mentioned above. To be clear, the bridge rocks as god intended.

I see. There are folks that block the bridge from rocking back and forth. Set up that way sometimes you'll hear creaking, ping, and pop noises as the strings get stuck in the saddle grooves and then escape making that kind of noise when using the trem. I was just throwing it out there in case you had a setup like that.

[distressed]

From my experience this is 99% trem-related. A good technician should resolve it.

[alexpigment]

From my experience this is 99% trem-related. A good technician should resolve it.

The sound appeared to be coming from the trem (and was quite loud), so this makes sense. You said a good technician should resolve it, but in this case, I don't know what a technician could do that I couldn't do myself. Do you mind letting me know what you believe is happening and what I need to do?

[B.T.]

From my experience this is 99% trem-related. A good technician should resolve it.

The sound appeared to be coming from the trem (and was quite loud), so this makes sense. You said a good technician should resolve it, but in this case, I don't know what a technician could do that I couldn't do myself. Do you mind letting me know what you believe is happening and what I need to do?

Do you have it strung with 11’s or higher gauge strings? Neck shimmed for clean break at the bridge? Sorry if you already posted that info, at a family gathering right now.

[crazyzeke]

Do you have it strung with 11’s or higher gauge strings? Neck shimmed for clean break at the bridge?

I can't speak for Alex but I know from experience, for a fact, both of those things help.

Additional note - when I used Ernie Ball or a few other brands of string, detuning would often occur as the ball ends would rotate around in the vibrato especially when it was being used, and eventually snap as the string fully unwound, necessitating soldering them so that couldn't happen. That became a tedious part of restringing, something that's not exactly majorly fun anyway.

I then moved to Elixir, forgot to do it one time and never had a string snap due to unwinding at the ball end so I guess the extra money I spend to have them last longer due to the coating extends to them being better wound at the factory as well. They genuinely are better sounding. I think apart from the high E which snapped after I spent hours doing solo takes playing with a sixpence the rest of the set might be 3 months old and has been played a lot.

[alexpigment]

Do you have it strung with 11’s or higher gauge strings? Neck shimmed for clean break at the bridge? Sorry if you already posted that info, at a family gathering right now.

I use 10s, and I've set it up for 10s. The neck pocket has a ~1 degree angle from the factory, but I've reverse-shimmed it to take down a little of the unnecessary angle, because the trem is closer to the bridge than a traditional JM. I've got 4 JMs, and it's really no problem to use 10s (or even 9s) if your geometry is correct. With all that being said, I don't believe that string gauge or neck angle has anything to do with the problem I originally described.