Clint Green wrote
I've heard complaints about the tremel-no not being strong enough to hold the bridge in hardtail mode and also that they can sometimes be a little noisy. Just what I've read on various forums, but I am still keen to check them out for myself sometime.
I have a Tremol-No on my 7 string and it seems strong enough to hold that in fixed mode with no issues, the only difference being that on 7 string they can't really do the dive only mode, or rather they can but because of the added tension you need to use a allen screw instead of the thumb screw, which makes it impractical. Tremol-Nos can be very temperamental though, if they are not setup up perfectly they can give lots of issues, however with a little bit of patience the results are great.
They're also relatively affordable, the entire unit retails in the region of R600, comes with the claw and the arm etc and even some extra thumb screws etc. One thing I really like about the Tremol-No is that once it's locked down there is a noticeable improvement in the attack, it doesn't sound exactly like a fixed bridge but it does get very ball park in that it becomes more resonant and their seems to be a slight increase in upper mids. As for the noise issues, I haven't had any personally and I don't see how the unit could create unwanted noise, perhaps the people complaining were simply getting the spring noise confused with the Tremol-No.
If you're ever in Cape Town sometime you're more than welcome to try out the Tremol-No on my 7 string ? I personally consider the benefits of it to be so worthwhile that in future I will be installing them on any and all trem equipped guitars I own.
Clint Green wrote
The ESP one is the ESP Arming Adjuster, it's basically a half Ibanez Backstop (the Backstop has two "bolts" and the Arming Adjuster has one). The backstop still seems to be hailed as the supreme trem stabilizer but one must sometimes wonder if this isn't just a mythical status attained because they're so rare.
The Super Vee Maglok opperates in a very similar way to the Arming adjuster and the Ibanez Backstop, however marketing hype claims it to be more stable as it uses a system of locking rare earth magnets to achieve it's results. I personally don't have an opinion on them yet as I have yet to try one, but in theory they seem like another good competitor in the "allowing double stops to sound in tune on a floyd" market.
