Hi, can anyone advise please? I am new to this forum, I am not an expert or new to guitar building or maintenance and been playing many years, but I can't seem to solve a string tension problem with my custom strat. I collected vintage parts mostly from usa as I wanted to build (assemble) my own usa strat but could not afford to buy a vintage strat outright, so over many months one piece at a time I collected vintage, or re-issue quality parts, no rubbish, parts and assembled my strat, the end result was great, the final job was to have a professional final set up carried by a tech, the guitar looks, sounds amazing and generally plays great - except that I like the bridge to float for tremolo and to bend strings a lot but the string tension is stronger on my guitar that other strats I have played, I use earnie ball 9's and have played several other usa strats, squires, etc from shops they are also set up with 9's but all the other guitars the strings bend much more easily than mine, the bridge is set up raised to about 3mm with 3 trems springs in the back, all is pretty much text book set up but still can't understand why tension is higher on my guitar, neck scale is correct 25.5" I think I will have to find a tech with good knowledge of strat set up if I can't solve the problem through the forum. I could go down to 8's but don't want to unless it is the last resort and I can only think that maybe the trem springs are a different tension, or something? any ideas. Thanks for your time.

Welcome.

Sight unseen and without the guitar in front of any one of us who deal with such things routinely, it is safe to say that regardless of "premium replacement parts", etc, the further one get away from an original instrument and its components, the more stuff like you are experiencing can and will happen.

Just one scenario out of many: Where the neck fits into the body, if either one is not dead-on to OEM specs in terms of height, depth, etc. of a given model, run and/or year, this surely will affect your string tension. A direct repercussion of this is the way your bridge/block would have to be set and this would also affect the tension. Granted, the PSI of a set of Ernie Ball 9s would remain constant but again, there are MANY factors beyond this. We could theorize until we're blue in the face but realistically, a hands-on examination is the only way.

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