Bigsby with retainer bar
It Begins With The Bigsby
The Bigsby Vibrato was the first successful production tremolo. It was conceived in
the late 1940s but produced with technology that is representative of the 1950s. The
original intent was for downward movement
of the tailpiece to cause a slacking of the
strings. The Bigsby was designed to be
mounted on the top surface of either a hollowbody or solidbody guitar. The strings are
anchored and wrapped around a metal bar
that is the moveable part of a big hinge. The
strings then pass over a rocker bridge that
is mounted onto the face of the guitar. The
arm rests on a thick gauge return spring, and
the pressure of the strings holds the spring
in place. When the arm is pressed, the slacking of the strings causes the bridge to move
in the strings’ direction, which lowers their
tension and thus, their pitch. When the arm
is returned to its resting position, the strings
should return (ideally) to tuned pitch.
This tremolo takes little effort to use, and
the arm has a limited range of downward
travel. An inability to return to pitch accurately and a thinning of the tone, however,
are inherent characteristics on the original
Bigsby. A design revision shows a retainer bar
preceding the strings’ travel to the bridge,
creating a sharper break angle to increase
sustain, which was a good thing. The revision also added more pressure on the bridge
to couple it to the body more substantially,
which increased the resonation factor, but
resulted in the problem of friction at the
bridge saddles.
Photo courtesy Dave’s Guitar Shop
at the nut, but also the strings catching on
the bridge. The saddle offered by Bigsby
was a piece of aluminum with compensated
positioning on the surface to pre-intonate
the strings. Strings hung up in this bridge
saddle, largely because the windings got
caught in the string slots. To alleviate this,
Bigsby developed a rounded-surface bridge
that improved the travel of the strings but
still provided enough of a break angle for the
strings to achieve much-needed sustain.
Players with a need for warbling enjoyed the
Bigsby for a time, but the limitations created a
need for improvements. The Bigsby’s arm was
only intended for a downward motion that
lightly detuned the pitch of notes and chords.
Pulling up on the arm would cause catastroph-ies, like the return spring falling out.
Enter The Fender
Since the tailpiece and the bridge were two
separate assemblies, there was a need to
consolidate them, making for fewer moveable parts. Fender was enjoying success in
the 1950s with their solidbody guitar designs
and was developing a guitar called the
Stratocaster. This guitar would feature their
Synchronized Tremolo; it would soon become
the defining tremolo of that era. The idea of
this tremolo was to combine the bridge and
tailpiece into one assembly, and have it move
in its entirety. The original design called for
it to be floated (movement up and down),
making it possible for guitar players to apply
to vibrato chords and bent notes, as well as
doing more extreme pitch bends.
While pushing the arm down, the strings
move over the bridge and the nut, two critical areas of friction. With the Bigsby tremolo,
players not only had to deal with friction
The Fender tremolo was a feat of engineering. It is attached to the guitar both externally and internally, as a single assembly. This
tremolo bridge consolidated the tailpiece
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and bridge into a single unit that pivots off
six screws. The baseplate of the tremolo
is mounted to a steel sustain block with
a considerable amount of mass. Six bent
nickel-plated bridge pieces are anchored to
the baseplate and are adjustable to intonate
each string more accurately. One outstanding
feature in the Fender tremolo bridge is the
ability to adjust the height of each string—
something that could only be done previously
with two screws on the treble and bass sides
of a guitar’s bridge. The arm screws into the
baseplate and continues into the sustain
block, making the assembly move as a whole.
With the strings tuned, the bridge is counterbalanced by three to five springs, anchored
by a claw inside a cavity routed in the underside of the body. These springs pull the sustain block backward while the strings pull the
whole bridge forward. It is a balancing act.
This is what makes the Fender so much more
responsive to the touch of its tremolo arm.
Fender Synchronized Tremolo
Photo courtesyFender
