hello everybody

last week i bought my new american standard strat hss. the day i used for the first time the whammy bar ( it was the same day i bought it) i found a spring in the case!
i wonder if it came from inside the guitar or it was inside the small bags that came with the guitar

here is the spring:


thanks all for help

That's the trem arm spring. It goes down the hole before the arm.

+1

The spring exerts some reverse tension on the whammy bar to prevent it from twirling around uncontrollably.

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

The spring tends to fall out when you remove the trem arm. If you don't want to leave the trem arm on all the time there are some ways you can keep the spring in the hole. A little blob of Vaseline/petroleum jelly on the bottom of the spring will stick it in place. Or bend a mild kink into the middle of the spring.

If those approaches don't appeal to you, your guitar should have had a round paper adhesive dot over the trem arm hole to keep the spring in place. You can buy a pack of those cheaply at any place that sells office supplies. Or a small refrigerator magnet -- you can use it over and over in place of stickers. Or a short bolt -- just screw it in/out with your fingers, not too tight.

Another option is to not use the spring and tighten the arm the old-school way. Get a roll of white teflon plumber's tape/joint tape from a hardware store for a dollar or two. Wrap the tape around the arm's thread a couple of times, pulling/stretching it as you wrap it. The tape is non-adhesive and just stays in place because it's stretched under tension, so it doesn't gunk up the thread -- actually protects the thread from wear while giving the arm's rotation a smooth feel. You can alter the stiffness of the rotation by putting more or fewer wraps of tape. The tape eventually shreds, especially if you remove the arm often. But a roll is a lifetime supply.

Callaham says the spring is a bad way to take the slop out of the arm. He claims it's the reason so many modern arms break off. I don't know if that's true but I've used plumber's tape for decades and it just seems more convenient to me than looking for lost springs.

BTW, you can buy a pack of springs for a couple of bucks if you ever lose it. Some people take the spring out of a retractable ballpoint pen to use as a replacement if they lose the stock spring. You have to be a little careful of that because ballpoint springs aren't all the same size -- some of them will jam up the hole and be almost impossible to extract.

thank you all!
so i just put it down the hole as it is no matter what side go first?

it seems that many faced that problem with that little spring

Doesn't matter which side goes first. I have gone through a few of those and finally bought a baggie of 12 from Fender to replace lost ones. And have not lost one since...

+1, found this to be the same spring used on Jazzmaster and Jaguar trems as well.

Where can one buy the springs?

Guitar Center and Sam Ash sell a baggie of 12 for about $6.00