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Metal89

Metal89

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So as I stated before, I’m working on a piece that I plan on writing lyrics to called “into the gates of hell” in the style of Symphonic Death Metal. Anyone that would like to collaborate and do the vocals are more than welcome to hit me up, would prefer layered growls with a bit of reverb and I don’t have the talent to do that without hurting my vocal chords, nor the mic to do it either.

Now after playing around with it a bit I decided it would be best to go the Drop C or C# route. Still have to play around with that but leaning towards C.. my Jackson Dinky had recently been set up for it but my guitar tech said that the licensed Floyd rose, where the bridge meets the posts, is warped so it won’t hold tune. Sure enough the A string will not stay in tune… really a shame because I would of liked to use active EMG’s and that one has the 81-85 combo. Don’t have the money to get my Faulkner axe set up for it either.. so I’ll end up using my old Epi Goth Sg with the iommi signature pickup and air Norton dimarzio.

So hopefully after work I can get the drums and guitar portion of the intro down and work out a rough draft of the rest of the song. Planning on it being no less than 4 minutes but we’ll see.
 
Metal89 said:
my Jackson Dinky had recently been set up for it but my guitar tech said that the licensed Floyd rose, where the bridge meets the posts, is warped so it won’t hold tune. Sure enough the A string will not stay in tune…
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Ok,

The Floyd Rose 'Specials' (Korean production) are known for soft baseplates. The metal on the 'knife edges' tends to wear flat on the post fulcrum and this causes a failure of the guitar to return to pitch - globally - meaning it affects ALL strings, and not just one.

If you are going out of tune on only one string, first, change that string before anything else. I did all the warranty repairs on tremolo Fenders and Jacksons and 90% of the time, if its a problem with only one string, its either the string itself, or a loose/stripped saddle screw.
 
Inspector #20 said:
Ok,

The Floyd Rose 'Specials' (Korean production) are known for soft baseplates. The metal on the 'knife edges' tends to wear flat on the post fulcrum and this causes a failure of the guitar to return to pitch - globally - meaning it affects ALL strings, and not just one.

If you are going out of tune on only one string, first, change that string before anything else. I did all the warranty repairs on tremolo Fenders and Jacksons and 90% of the time, if its a problem with only one string, its either the string itself, or a loose/stripped saddle screw.
Click to expand...
Oh crap! I didn’t even think about that because on my Floyd rose guitars I use nothing but Ernie ball paradigms, didn’t cross my mind that that one particular string could of been a lemon. I’ll definitely try that then and hold off recording for a day or so. So here’s a question. If I was able to get just the baseplate of a 1000 series, would that cause issues with the rest of the tremolo system? Eventually I would like to replace all of it with a 1000 series but im on an extremely tight budget at the moment.
 
Ok, finally had a chance to sit down with my Jackson Dinky and really see what’s going on. First, I was mistaken, it’s not the A string it’s the D string. I originally started this thread while at work so didn’t have the guitar in front of me, so I misremembered. Not like that would make any difference. Anyways I unwound the string and undid the clamp at the nut. I started to try and loosen the clamp at the bridge but I noticed that i easily pushed the saddle forward.
I tried to see if there was any play with the screw with my fingers, nothing. But with my Allen keys there was room to tighten it. There is wear on the saddle where the screw has been sitting. So I repositioned it based on the wear marks and tightened it down. I put the same string back on it because by all accounts they are brand new strings. Retightened everything, I have to head to work but tomorrow I’m going to see if the saddle is still holding, tune it back up and see if everything holds. I might need to get a new saddle and possibly screw (to be on the safe side)

I had just thought about taking a picture of it after I reassembled everything but on the D string saddle you should be able to see the wear on one side where the screw is.
 

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Metal89 said:
Ok, finally had a chance to sit down with my Jackson Dinky and really see what’s going on. First, I was mistaken, it’s not the A string it’s the D string. I originally started this thread while at work so didn’t have the guitar in front of me, so I misremembered. Not like that would make any difference. Anyways I unwound the string and undid the clamp at the nut. I started to try and loosen the clamp at the bridge but I noticed that i easily pushed the saddle forward.
I tried to see if there was any play with the screw with my fingers, nothing. But with my Allen keys there was room to tighten it. There is wear on the saddle where the screw has been sitting. So I repositioned it based on the wear marks and tightened it down. I put the same string back on it because by all accounts they are brand new strings. Retightened everything, I have to head to work but tomorrow I’m going to see if the saddle is still holding, tune it back up and see if everything holds. I might need to get a new saddle and possibly screw (to be on the safe side)

I had just thought about taking a picture of it after I reassembled everything but on the D string saddle you should be able to see the wear on one side where the screw is.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if there is any play in a saddle, it can make for some mighty..."interesting"...intonation.

Good troubleshooting!
 
smitty_p said:
Yeah, if there is any play in a saddle, it can make for some mighty..."interesting"...intonation.

Good troubleshooting!
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Well thanks to inspector for pointing it out. I was just going to let it sit til I got a replacement bridge. Didn’t even think to just look at the saddles, every time I hit a power chord on that string the tuning on thar string would just drop by almost a complete step. Like I said though, I’ll see if it holds but I’m sure those saddles need to be replaced soonish.
 
smitty_p said:
Maybe not. The real question is if the retainer screw is stripped out - either the screw itself (easy fix) or the threaded screw hole (not easy fix). The retainer screw is what actually holds the saddle in place.
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True.. before I left for work I tried pushing on that saddle again with the same amount of force and it held, for now. Could of just been the case that he thought he had it tightened and it wasn’t. Time will tell.
 
Metal89 said:
And it’s a success, it holds tune just fine, spent two hours this morning chugging and ripping on it. ‘‘Twas the screw. Lesson learned, as Robert said. On a floating bridge if a string is going out, check the string and/or set screw on that saddle.
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Sounds great!

Probably, the previous owner adjusted the saddle but didn't get the screw tight enough.
 
smitty_p said:
Sounds great!

Probably, the previous owner adjusted the saddle but didn't get the screw tight enough.
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Oh I’m the only owner this guitar has had. I bought it a few years ago from zzounds as well as the emg 81-85 combo with the intent of having the pickups changed out. As soon as I got it I sent it to my guitar tech, had them change out the electronics, even the selector switch and had it set for drop D

Fairly recently I had sent it back for a badly needed setup but told them to set it for drop C this time. Well my guitar tech had hired new help as he was getting swamped, so I’m assuming that in trying to rush it out, that one of them forgot to tighten it down. It happens, it holds tune, no fret buzz, and intonation seems to be on point.
 
Metal89 said:
And it’s a success, it holds tune just fine, spent two hours this morning chugging and ripping on it. ‘‘Twas the screw. Lesson learned, as Robert said. On a floating bridge if a string is going out, check the string and/or set screw on that saddle.
Click to expand...

I'm happy to hear you got it sorted out. I was in charge of all tremolo setups and complsints/warranty at Fender, including artist relations, so ive seen a lot of these kind of "one string" issues.

I actually went to a 3-day Floyd Rose training put on by rep's from Floyd Rose.
 
So the bass part is done, actually had it done a few days ago. Tried something different with the bass, I actually went through the line out and plugged that in with some pretty good results. So the core of the instrumentation is done, I set up my midi player today so I should be able to get the orchestra aspect done, lyrics are mostly done. So its basically orchestra, vocals, and then playing with panning and volume..
 
So this is probably the last update before I finally put the song out there. Instrumentation and vocals are DONE. As I was getting close to the end of this, I came to the realization that I want this done right! I decided to actually get this properly mixed and mastered. Problem is, finding an audio engineer that knows and can do symphonic metal. Sure you can find engineers that will take it on… but it’s not going to be right and most in my area does hip hop, country, there’s a few that does hard rock. Nope, I went searching elsewhere, across the pond even.

I found a guy in Scandinavia, showed him what I got, told him what I’m trying to convey, told him my suggestions on a few things and what I did, and asked him if he was interested in taking me on as a client. He said yes, but he’s about to take some time off and has a bunch of other clients, so he said he’s more than happy to do it but it won’t be finished til the end of this month. I told him I’m perfectly happy with that. So he told me his price which was more than reasonable, and tomorrow I’m going to prep everything to send to him which basically involves labeling everything, making sure absolutely nothing is clipping. Reverse all the panning I did, and rendering it to WAV format. Sounds like a lot but it’s all real easy and quick to do.

Further. After finding him… I’m thinking about doing a 3-4 song EP and seeing what happens..
 
Metal89 said:
So this is probably the last update before I finally put the song out there. Instrumentation and vocals are DONE. As I was getting close to the end of this, I came to the realization that I want this done right! I decided to actually get this properly mixed and mastered. Problem is, finding an audio engineer that knows and can do symphonic metal. Sure you can find engineers that will take it on… but it’s not going to be right and most in my area does hip hop, country, there’s a few that does hard rock. Nope, I went searching elsewhere, across the pond even.

I found a guy in Scandinavia, showed him what I got, told him what I’m trying to convey, told him my suggestions on a few things and what I did, and asked him if he was interested in taking me on as a client. He said yes, but he’s about to take some time off and has a bunch of other clients, so he said he’s more than happy to do it but it won’t be finished til the end of this month. I told him I’m perfectly happy with that. So he told me his price which was more than reasonable, and tomorrow I’m going to prep everything to send to him which basically involves labeling everything, making sure absolutely nothing is clipping. Reverse all the panning I did, and rendering it to WAV format. Sounds like a lot but it’s all real easy and quick to do.

Further. After finding him… I’m thinking about doing a 3-4 song EP and seeing what happens..
Click to expand...
Sounds like it’s going to be a great finished product buddy
 
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