I have an Eric Johnson Strat. Its only about a year and a half old. My Whammy bar bent like it was made of butter then finally broke off. I have been using Whammy bars sence my Bigsby in the 60s my floyd Rose never did this. I never really got to use the whammy bar on my guitar. This happen to anyone else???[/code]

I've had mine for two years and the trem arm is fine. It's solid. I can't imagine one just bending like butter unless it was fatigued from repeated hard use. Did you like to really wrench down on it?

_________________
"is that a real poncho...i mean
Is that a mexican poncho
Or is that a sears poncho?
Hmmm...no foolin ...." FZ

nope mine is nice and solid mabe the bridge is to tight eh.

Bent like it was made of butter? Holy crap.

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"It was right from the start" - John Mayer

I'm just happy to be a Guitar player!
I can't imagine what life would be like without it.

Ouh what a bummer....i really hate this kinda things happen to your guitar especially if its a prized one...

the trems on the strats are very good, but they cant take half the abuse of a floyd rose, if you were trying to get the same range and aggressive play from a strat trem as you you would a floyd, its no surprise it broke. they're just not the same

I never abused them in any Strat I've ever owned and still, I've had a few break like cooked spaghetti over the years. It happens sometimes where you'll get a tremolo arm that has a bit too much porosity. I've found out the hard way that you should check the arm along with the rest of the guitar. One of the easiest ways to tell if porosity may be a problem is if you can clearly see what looks like popped bubbling on the metal arm itself.

it happened only once
the tremolo arm just got stucked after playing
i placed the guitar on the stand
preparing to keep it
but the tremolo arm was still pointing towards the ceiling
i later found the tread worn off and messed up a bit
which i repaired myself with a blade
still using the same tremolo arm now....

go buy another one....

Dear poorboy56

I did ordered a original replacement treomolo arm
which is the vintage type ( shorter one)
however when it arrived in my local store
the end plastic tip seems to comes off easily
i sold it back to the shop

do not worry
the old tremolo arm just looks and works like new
nobody can tell that it been repaired

hey dude. when i got my first guitar a MIM fender awhile back the trem bar broke inside the socket for it because i was screwing it in as far as possible

this may be the case for you?[/b]

i've bought the new american standard and I really don't like that tremolo arm. It doesn't looks as strong as the one on the american Deluxe models. Hope it won't break off . the only thing thing I like on this whammy bar is that it stays in the position where you left if because of the spring inside the tremolo block.

That's wild. That's a really big fat metal trem bar. How the hell's it break? I just use mine for vibrato and never overtighten because I've heard some horror stories about breaking it off in the bridge and then the bridge is fried. Seems like you'd have to work at it really hard to break that big bar of metal. Maybe the one piece you got somehow was just fatigued metal at the factory? My Squier and Highway bars have been fine.

Wouldn't that be more of a plating issue? I'm assuming the arm is either electroplated or dipped.

Not necessarily. Electroplated or dipped, the plating would not fill in all the pock marks (air holes) in the base metal. If it were strictly a plating issue, the chrome would flake/peel off sooner than later.