To be honest, I'm glad its expensive and requires routing, it means I wont have to do it. Everytime I have to change over a tremolo or bridge over to something that isn't a drop in replacement, it always ends up talking way more time than I think it is, and I spend half a Saturday doing one thing. I don't mind routing, I'm not as apprehensious as I was before. But its not something ill jump right into like other aspects of working on them. The vast majority of the routing is just making space for a different pickup, and the occasional opening for battery compartments. At least for me, there are guys (and a woman) I know that do that stuff all day long. They'll do 3 jobs in the time it takes me to do 1.

The first few times I routed an actual guitar that belonged to someone, and not a piece of wood, or throw out body; I'd think of the scene from "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"; when she over cooks the turkey, and Clark makes one small cut into it and the thing just cracks open and burps out a puff of smoke.
Thankfully that never happened./

After all my gear getting stolen last year (including my pitchblack tuner) I have been learning to use my ear more. Tuners can make you have a lazy ear, and mine got lazy over the past few years. I'll stick to tuners and my new found ear to tune my guitars.

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2000 American Deluxe Stratocaster
2011 Gibson Les Paul Trad Pro 50's
2007 Epi Les Paul Custom
90's ESP Eclipse
JH-1B Jimi Hendrix Crybaby
Analogman KOT
Korg Pitchblack
Boss NS-2 PH-2
Blues Deluxe Reissue
1999 & 2007 Marshall TSL 100 w/1960BV cab

Thanks but I'll keep my $500 dollars and buy another guitar or put it on a better amp. I prefer to do my own tuning. If your guitar is set up properly it only takes about a minute to tune before you play. A good tuner is about a hundred bucks. I also like to do my own set up on my guitars as I use slightly different set up on different guitars.

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OK, I'll hum a little bit, got it now?

To be fair, there is a niche player that would benefit from this. Im thinking of wedding bands, Late night with D Letterman, etc. Guys who are playing an amazing array of different songs, and need to be able to go seemlessly from one song to another. I wouldnt put one in. I see it giving your tone some spoungey sound. If individual springs are putting the tension on each string, i see like independant suspension on a car. Great for regualar driveing, but driving fast, or towing, its too springy. I can see that happening to the attack tone. But, I havent used one, so Im just speculating.

Ive put in a Super V, and like i mentioned, it worked great holding it in tune with heavy trem use, and sounded more like the regular trem than a FR. But man, that piece that goes over the nut is ugly, it reminds me of a toaster out of the 1950's.

Reminds me of the R&D of Gibson's new Firebird X.... Just a bunch of hype and not really useful. Let's see someone like Joe Satrani or Eddie Van Halen crank on it and see what happens. Proper strings and setups will prevent a guitar from going out of tune.

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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