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Tutorial - Guitar Setup 101
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Checking The Tremolo Knife Edges and Posts

Richard Lundmark 307 lessons

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Checking the knife edges

As described in the video (and I do urge you to check this on the video), you can easily take off the tremolo to do maintenance, cleaning and such. If you have any tuning stability problems, you should always check the knife-edges to see if they are worn out, or not properly worn in. They should be about as sharp as a butter-knife, and tilt smoothly back and forth against the posts. This is also what I mean by the “angle” of the tremolo and posts. That is, that the angle of the grooves in the posts, in relation to the knife edges, is such that the grooves in the posts do not pinch the knife edges in any way, nor that the knife edges can move up or down the post as you move the tremolo. It must be tight, but not too tight.

Furthermore, if you have an Ibanez with an original Edge tremolo, or the Lo-Pro edge, you should ALWAYS check the posts to see if there is a small hole in the middle. That means that you have a small screw inside the post, securing it to the floor of the socket. Always remember to loosen this properly if you want to lower the tremolo. Many are those how have busted their guitars and posts by trying to lower their bridges when the small screws inside have been locked down.

Finally, if you wish to sharpen your knife edges, and feel at all insecure about how to do it, please contact me, or check with Rick at Ibanez Rules (who has an excellent tech-site devoted to Ibanez tremolos).

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