Tuning issues aside, what are your opinions of floating vs. decking with regard to the sound? When I got my first strat in 1980, I gave up on the tremolo early on and put in all 5 springs to deck the bridge. Recently I decided to do some experimenting with this guitar since it's no longer my No. 1. I restored it to a floating configuration with three springs. (I use .010-.038 strings.) This first trouble I ran into was the sound. Holy cow, it sounded like rubber bands when I played it unplugged. I kind of expected this a little but not so much. Still not sure what to do with this guitar. I tried following the standard Fender setup procedures but the setup is pretty messed up right now.

If ony I were so lucky for the bridge to be a standard 6 scew trem but it's not I have a floyd rose on this guitar so that seems to through a monkey wrench into the equation I know all about tricks and I would much rather the guitar have more punch is that possible? I know this is all subjective to ones own style but thoughts and consensus are somtimes useful when making changes to a guitar and I want to exhaust every possiblity before i give up on it..

For more punch on my strats, I went up from 10-46 to 11-50's...not only did I notice a difference playing it acoustically, but once I plugged it in, it tore my head off!

A big part of how SRV got that killer tone in the studio was because in some cases he used sets as heavy as 13-60! Live he backed it off to 12's or sometimes 11's, otherwise it would tear his fingers to shreds!

_________________
The mind is like a parachute; it doesn't work unless its open-FZ