The Guthrie Govan Charvel has a FATAL DESIGN FLAW! 

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The biggest flaw with my guitar is I'm not Guthrie Govan.

As my guitar gently queefs.

That tremol-no is not configured correctly. The claw section is unscrewed too far out of the body for it to work without the "piston" bar binding like it is there. The "piston" bar is supposed to be co-linear with the block and there is a lever joint on the connection to the bridge. If it isn't configured correctly, the mechanism will never work as intended. The idea is to be able to either hard block the bridge, or have only down whammy action on the bridge depending on which screws are tighened down. I used to have one of the earlier models of it on a Jackson RR3 many years ago. They work a treat if you set them up correctly. I'm pretty sure the "piston" bar is hardened (or used to be in the model I had) so that is doesn't get all burred up and cause excessive friction.

Shredding in a Cosby sweater on a parlor couch....life is good.

That's right... Brad was one of the first with amp vids. Not consistent, but always entertaining regardless. Thanks for being you, Brad!

The guitar is clearly built by Chevrolet

If it’s good enough for Guthrie it’s good enough for me. Now, can anyone lend me 3k?

You don’t adjust the height of a floating bridge with the springs and strings fully tensioned. You will break the floating bolts. You can tell me all you want you have done it your whole life like that, and I’ll refute that argument with what my coworker told our foreman “that just means you have been doing this wrong your whole life”

That guitar is way over priced. We get far too excited over slabs of wood bolted together with the earliest of electrical technology and strings. I like cheap guitars that play and sound great.

I wouldn't call it a paper weight but then again there's no way in hell I would ever pay 3700 dollars for it .

Step 1 - Remove the Tremol-No. Problem solved. That said, I have one on my Ibanez RG2027, without these issues. I actually know the guy who invented this, Kevan Geier. I remember when it was in development. How Guthrie tunes is likely similar to the Frauda method - tune to pitch, really go ham on the trem, then 1) tune one string, 2) dive, 3) tune back. Repeat for all strings. Strat players know this sort of thing very, very well. And the G string is the biggest culprit for tuning issues. When you bend, or use the trem, you give the trem a quick whack back down (sometimes up), and you return to perfect tune. I use a similar method for stability where I bend and pull UP on the trem, then tune. A slight pull up will always put it back in tune if it goes slightly wonky. Graphtech saddles and nut help tremendously, a perfectly filed nut slot, and something like Big Bends Nut Sauce (I use my own concoction of powdered graphite and Super Lube oil/grease mixture.)

I've got a Tube Depot t-shirt that says, "Revolt Against the Solid State" 😆

The Tremol-No should go to a D shaft with a small flat to prevent the creaking. Just needs a couple thousandths clearance on the flat. It would provide better clamping force from more surface area and thread engagement. A PTFE cylinder insert would eliminate the need for lubrication. The rod does pivot on a pin when you use the trem, keeping it in line with the cylinder. Just a couple design changes would make the thing work so much better. For what they charge, it should have been done a decade ago.

Probably put a flat on the knife edges and posts of the trem because the bridge height was adjusted under tension.

Man, that palm muted shredding was slick af.

Guthrie’s PU wiring scheme is the trick, various coils combined in a very specific way, I forget the details, so he can go from country thin chicken picking, to deep jazz or even heavy metal sounds

Saw a guy use a sliding door latch as a tremelo block before....genius and cheap!

Imagine the killer low cost guitars one can buy with 3700. And only have to change pickups sometimes. And do a fret setup sometimes.

The Guitologist and Uncle Doug are OGs

A better way to check how much relief you have is to hold down the 1st and 19th(approx) fret then tap the string around the 9th, it's a much more accurate way of checking the neck bow.

Met Guthrie at a guitar workshop, very talented and very humble. Lovely chap

Setting the intonation on an electric guitar is over obsessed. When playing (especially in a live performance), finger pressure varies with “emotion” and can vary significantly. A simple ‘close enough’ is sufficient. Any resultant deviation can be adjusted by experience with the particular instrument. Experienced players will naturally compensate for such expected issues. The bottom line: Get to know your instrument and realize that playing “in tune” comes with experience. btw: starting with an instrument that’s well tuned is imperative and seemingly overlooked by thousands in this day and age of low cost electronic tuners.

you don't need a straight edge because a fresh string, under tension is perfectly straight. you're sighting the neck relative to the strings.

Tremol Nos work great if you install them right and actually take the time to understand it.

Guitologist, why would you "sight down the neck" of all your guitars, if you can just fret the string in two places to use as a straight edge? And then slide a guitar pick between the string and a fret, as a thickness gauge? If the string just holds a 0.6 mm pick, it's a good relief. (And that is all that a 0.6 mm pick is good for and the only reason to have one.)

i have tremolno in all my guitars and they all work great

Staggered machine heads to eliminate string trees just don't quite work well enough most of the time unless the headstock "drop" is a little bit more than standard. What does work are Steinberger gearless heads.

Brad PLEASE loosen the strings before you adjust the height on a Floyd style bridge... if you turn the posts under tension you're wearing out the edges of the trem killing the tuning stability! 😢

The Tremol-No is great if you need to tune to drop D real quick. I think a D-Tuna is a little easier but they're both just compromises to not have to bring another guitar to a gig, which I'm all in favor of. I had to bring five guitars to a show for a band I was in and that got old -real- fast.

You should make a fake US Quarter with a screw and two way tape it on there, and say, " Here, fixed it!"

I have a 2014 charvel custom shop that had this identical problem. The guitar wouldn’t stay in tune and made that same crunching noise. It did not have the trem o no on it either. The problem was the rout on the Floyd was too tight and it was slightly rubbing on the trem bar side. I took a dremel and shaved a 16th off the side and problem solved. It won’t go out of tune at all. (And I’m an idiot with excessive trem abuse..lol.). It seems the problem was with their routing jig that year. It pissed me off a little that they let this get through quality control on a 4000 dollar guitar. I only commented because Ive set up Floyd’s for about 40 years and I missed it initially. Let me know if this helps. Love your channel Brad. Take care.

Impressive no pick and no finger nail playing, i thought that i was alone in the planet. Well done carnal (brother).God bless everyone of my rockin friends.

I’m afraid this is user error with the tremol-no. In order for it to not bind you have to make sure that the claw screws are adjusted to make sure that the shaft of the tremol-no is traveling perfectly within the mechanism. I have several of them in different guitars and have learned the hard way. You have to set the tension with the claw as normal but then you need to make minor adjustments checking all the time with your ears to hear that the shaft if moving smoothly and without impediment . Once it is then the system will work as intended. Unfortunately you’ve just misunderstood how it works . It’s an easy mistake to make.

I had a tremol no in a Ibanez Prestige RG652. With the push of one of those buttons, it could, jush push down only on the trem, completely floating or completely locked. It worked. I just never was good at playing with a Floyd Rose type bridge. By the way Brad, I love the way you play guitar. Absolutely awesome.👍👍👍👍

I seriously wonder if the guitar really left the factory this way 🤔 in my many years of buying and fussing about with guitars l have been known to do the wrong things as far as trying to adjust my guitar throughout the year and season changes. This guitar has a roasted neck and even a graphite reinforced neck. Really really shouldn’t move under sensible use, travel and play. I have MANY roasted wood guitars that I travel with every week and they are extremely good and stable.

Thanks for the info 👍🇺🇸

You know I like you and your practical common sense way about most things, but when it comes to guitar setup I will stick to my hard found methods. Those of us that are driven nuts by minute intonation problems and other things you seem to find unnecessary are deal breakers. I can hear the difference between the pitch of a note that is fretted too hard. Given the guitar temperament is a compromise at best every little bit counts. At least for me it does. There’s also the issue of letting the neck rest and settle after major truss rod adjustments. Like after string gauge changes. The next day it will usually need slight adjustment again. One problem with unfinished/oiled (especially maple) necks is their susceptibility to changes in humidity and temperature. A lot of this is due to wood not being let sit and dry and the tension in the wood relax before building. Basically IMO, I approach every guitar as an individual instrument with unique characteristics to take into consideration.

I have a Charvel DK24- much cheaper version of this with a Gotoh 510 bridge. Excellent guitar with a neck that plays itself

I love my USA Guthrie Govan! I consider it my desert island guitar; the neck and the fretwork are beautiful! I have no use for the Tremol-No, so that's never been a worry. It feels so good in the hand and sounds so good.

i changed the gauge of strings on my ibanez prestige 7 string guitar.i removed one of the 4 springs and turned the claw screws about a half a turn in . the floyd is flat and the guitar plays perfect so you can change string gauge on a floyd if your patient enough to keep tuning the guitar for 20 minutes straight until the floyd settles i went from 11s to 9s thanx nice video

Awesome as Always Another really cool vid Thankyou

thanks youtube for once again not notifying me 🤬😡

Great video, Brad. Keep up the good work!

The tremel-no is not setup correctly. I've set one up before and it's a tedious task to get it setup correctly. As for the lack of fine tuners, the original floyd did not have them and Guthrie has said that they get in the way when he's playing.

Lack of expertise.

There’s no reason this should cost more than a Les Paul!

Man, these old school intros make me feel like I'm popping in a VHS copy of Goonies or Short Circuit.

I own one and the stability is amazing so not sure what you’re doing wrong on the tremelno

I love your guitar playing style

Uncle Doug is the man! He makes things SO easy to understand with his analogies. Rip Rusty. Btw the Golan-Globus mock-up cracked me up at the beginning. Flashback to Delta Force and American Ninja in the 80s, love it!

Fun fact: You can drop a string on a Bigsby or Vibrola without the rest going out of tune.

I will comment that having the guitar laying flat with the neck in a neck rest is more than likely introducing more forward bow than in playing position, which could affect both action and intonation.

Thanks for sighting down the neck from the headstock to the bridge. Don't know how many experts have told me to sight from the bridge to the headstock. That absolutely doesn't work for me.

Never heard you play before, nice chops man you sound great!

Here's a wee gem for Brad and y'all. If one is adjusting intonation by comparing harmonic to fretted note go further up thañ the 12th. to th19th. or 24th. In the case of this guitar. The need for saddle intonation stems from the strings stiffness causing the vibrating length to be a little shorter than the stopped length. That shortening remains the same no matter wihich f ret is played but as the string is shortened ( higher fret ) the shortening from stiffness becomes a greater proportion of the length so the notes go sharp. So it's easier to detect errors higher up the neck.

Tip: Creamed Shaft: Oiled

39:34 ... or... you may have been grinding the knife edge and/or posts when you raised the posts without loosening the strings 😬

Thanks

Thanks again Brad!

They come with shims to get that shaft at the right pitch to where it doesn't make noise, I messed with one awhile back and ended up removing it...

I have the temol-no on both of my floyd equiped guitars and its a floyd must IMO. It helps when you're doing bends with one string while holding the other so the bridge doesnt lift, biggest reason I use them is in conjunction with the EVH D-tuna, otherwise when utilizing it and dropping tuning on the low E the other 5 strings would go sharp. Thats not why its been utilized here but IMO are a must with any full floating tremolo. Another guy lower says this one isnt set-up correctly yet this is how one of my guitars has it set-up.

This man is saving a FORTUNE on guitar picks.

Thanks!

I have an old 90s Jackson Kelly that I have been working on. I swapped the neck and have been having issues with getting it in lower tunings. This video was a lot of help. It also convinced me not to bother getting a tremel-no since it seems even more annoying than a floyd already is.

I would say he spent about 3K too much for that.

You are definitely right about intonation and the playing position crap.. but definitely tune a guitar with floyd and locking nut in playing playing position, before tighting the nut down

Playing with more actual human soul that GG on his own bad signature guitar is a flex, for those keeping score.

"I don't know what these are called..." It's written right there on the very thing that you're looking straight at and talking about, in large letters.

Got to hand it to you Brad, your Knopfler technique is on point.

The face of the tremol-no’s spring claw has to be really close to perfectly parallel to the tremolo block, otherwise the shaft/sleeve will bind and be noisy when using the trem.

Problem is they got greedy and are gouging the customer with profits of 33-40% instead of 15-20%

Not sure if you found this, but the shaft on many of the Tremelo-no units needs to be sanded down to slide better. Did that on both of mine, and perfect since.

Funny on such a beautiful high-end instrument to have a poorly functioning trem stopper design. Ibanez seems to have done a really good job with their edge zero or zero point floyd design though it doesn't lock it does set the returm position reliably - really the most important of securing a floating bridge.

Those tremel-nos have a side adjustment at the block that you could probably adjust. My experience has been that they're always pushed so far to one side to line up with the hole that they need to redesign the whole thing.

What a joke fender putting that on the back of the neck. Do they not know that Paul bigsby made for Merle Travis, the guitar with a similar headstock design I'd say fender stole from him. Where's their lawsuit.

Similarly, I have an EVH USA Wolfgang with D-Tuna. I many issues with the D-Tuna not staying in tune when switching between standard and drop D. I just leave it in drop D all the time. I use other guitars instead for standard tuning.

With all due respect, a bit of research would have helped you with the binding issue. I don’t get why you wouldn’t look it up. The binding just means that the claw needs micro-adjustments to ensure the piston is going in and out straight. That’s it. You spent a bunch of time railing the Tremol-No but don’t really understand how it works.

Great sound.

I have a GG model I took off the no tremolo set up and put on a tremolo switch FZG Tremolo Switch it frees up the Gotoh bridge and feels better all around doesn't make it a hardtail but can do different tuning Guthrie wanted the non fine tuning bridge because he had no use for the locking nut he said in so interviews that it bother his hands when he would play in the lower register and sometimes it would cut his hand . So the custom shop came up with a happy medium

I was pondering the logic of why odd thumb wheeled things rear bridge access wasn’t centered but was offset, & I’d noticed Guthrie’s guitar had the trem lock in the center spring hole of the rear of the bridge, while your neighbors guitar had it set up the second treble side spring hole?… 🕳️

Just because you don’t know what you’re doing with a tremol-no doesn’t mean it’s a piece of crap. You should never have accepted this guitar for a setup if you don’t know what you’re doing. Owner deserves a refund.

My 95 has a Wilkinson trem and it’s dead quiet

well i had to back off my saddle on the low e string so far on my prs.. that i had to remove the sping of the screw to get the intonation right.. standart strings nyxl 46-10 all the others are basicly withib 1 mm but 2mm ahead well i do like more relief than you do i think (basically my neck is dead flat without strings) i did my setup the same way you do it.. Laying it down tuning it up as perfect as i can Then i measure open sting, harmonic to check fibger position on the 12th and then pushed down on.. slightly rolling my finger to the top then in the end tube everything up and repead to check if it was correct.. (My tuner is always on and the stomp switch is my kill signal switch so i can see whats up with my intonation when i normally play.. ) But if i look at my other guitars… the saddle of my prs seems cursed and a hint to far to the front mounted… But one thing…. I really don’t like your tuner

Beautiful looking guitar ..love the wood .. Great playing ..loved it .

like you I REFUSE to alter saddle height, action, string height, or neck height, to adjust intonation unless its just way off, if all that is where I like it, no way do I sacrifice to attain perfect intonation, I am not having 1/8th" action whatever to get there. . . I have been known to shim a neck and raise bridge if that helps as I do like a more gisbon style string height off the body deck so I don't mind doing this, I prefer top mount floyds or any bridge for that matter but action and string height will be where I want it regardless...

I get that all the time, too. I'm with you about the position of the guitar when setting the intonation. I also can't see how it would affect tuning, either.

Love it brother man!!!

I have the guitar and I initially struggled with the tremol-no noise and friction but it’s about finding the sweet spot with the tremol-no rod when it’s perfectly straight once the screws on the body attached to the bar are properly balanced . It will have no issues at all. Hope that helps. Only thing I struggled with it was having low action with 10-46 gauge . Trade offs were too much relief on the neck or bring the action higher . After a lot of trials over the years, I settled with the little higher action without affecting the playability and its perfect now but I planned to sell it many times before that . But I don’t think I will have sell the guitar as the pups on this guitar makes it sounds like a violin and you can buy the pickups as aftermarket on their own if I am not wrong

39:36 i been looking for one of those Boss systems for a reasonable price In reasonable condition for awhile. What do you think about it? Do you like it?

I enjoyed your rant, Dave of DWOFS also rants about the “ you need to get it in playing position folks” also I appreciate you and Dave and Uncle Doug above all others for helping me and entertaining me while I learn amps and guitar workbench stuff. This vid doesn’t help my fear of tremolo tho 😂

Don't adjust bridge height on any guitar without detuning and taking the pressure off.

The two knobs together lock the tremolo and make it a fixed bridge, then you can unlock it and use the tremolo, also makes string changes easier

RIP Julian Sands

Easy way to check the intonation position question.....just check it on a good strobe tuner. I think you will be surprised what you find. If it needs to be measured with a strobe tuner those minute distances do matter in the overall scheme of things. I agree with your theory about trying new techniques on guitars. Everyone starts somewhere you just need the confidence and common sense to know when to back off if you get in too deep. well done!

Tremol no's have to be adjusted properly to not bind. It's not hard to do, but just requires a little care to make sure it's moving in line with the axis the bridge pivots. The rod that it slides on pivots to allow for the bridge to move vertically. It has enough degrees of freedom to move properly. My best guess is that you need to loosen the bit that clamps to the block and adjust it so that it's in line with the other springs. One of mine has had these for over a decade and it works fine. I've had my own minor annoyances with it, but it's generally solid. Fine tuners only exist because of the need to tune with a locking nut. Without the locking nut, you just dont need it.

I remember the first and last guitar that' had the floyd rose setup. I thought it was cool until I put a new set of strings on it for a friend of mine. I thought I was losing my mind. It probably took way over an hour or more. I had one of the worst headaches ever. Never again will I change strings on a floyd rose setup, not even for money.

If it's as finnicky, as you say, Guthrie probably has one setting, he can easily go to, and can finesse his way, around any wear/flaw, in the construction. Being an early model, the lock, may have been refined, in later versions.

I mount my boat jacks upside down , a 90 ° Jack into And the wire just falls into the strap button area thru the strap end like it Wants TO be there No loop

Okay so before I even click play on the video, lemme share a quick story. Once upon a time, I was able to buy a number of guitars, had about $11k to spend. I ended up getting a Guthrie Sig Charvel, a Suhr Modern satin, a Tom Anderson Drop Top and I think I had the Schecter Custom Shop HSS style guitar they make. The one that was hardest to play for whatever reason was the Guthrie, I couldn’t figure out why. Until I was up on stage with very bright lights and I learned very quickly, the flaming of the fretboard made it impossible for me to see where I was and for songs that started with a particular guitar part with the lights on, I just couldn’t see where I was at. I sold it immediately after along with everything else till I bought my Suhr Modern Pro which I still have to this day. I really wanted to love the Guthrie sig but that’s the thing that made it unplayable for me