Change of season frustrations. I noticed some string choking on my pointy wonder, and checked - yes, not enough dip. Which is a nightmare. The tone wonder is equipped with the cheap Edge III Floyd rose type thingy, which... later.
I started by evening out the string tuning, sort of, and I unscrewed the truss rod about 1/8 turn. Might not be enough. I also took the opportunity to do Bass E intonation, I suspect the relevant "bridge" slipped a while back: I was playing, and suddenlly everything was wonky. Nothing in tune. Which of course led to much fun, tightening down a loose e-string and re-tuning it all.
The Floyd rose thingy - Whoever invented this tune-torture machine should be exiled to a remote, very small island, and supplied with a huge container filled with guitars to re-string and set up every week. Final tuning leads to a merry-go-round chasing that fictional point where strings and springs decide to stop fighting for supremacy. As well as hoping the bridge (tremolo) level (that is, action height!) is good when that point is reached. As well as the non-stop lock-loose-lock of the locking nut to convince the strings not to shift tune too much when the locks are tightened down, since one string out of tune upsets the whole lot, and so forth. Fun.
I am wondering why I ever had to find out about low, easy-play actions. Back when ignorance was bliss, I never noticed seasonal changes. With this Pointy Guitar and all the fancy bits, tuning seems to take more time than playing. Which is why I am postponing new strings as long as possible. Postponing treble bleed modification and tone cap replacement, and log-pot replacement. I have a good excuse for postponing pickup replacement - too expensive.
As for the cheap Floyd rose copy, seems I will have my work cut out to improve it, if at all possible, or to find a better replacement which will fit. Some people claim that the real system is indeed stable, returning to in- tune after use. Sure?
Ah well, one down (maybe), I hope the others do not start buzzing immediately. But then, with the others, no round-and-round fun to tune around the strings-springs fight. Weird, but the Strat-alike bridge does not seem to be as finicky. And the rest are hard-tailed.
