Improving action of MIJ Tremolo system

[repoman]

I had a TVL JM for a while and stupidly sold it, it had the AVRI tremolo on it and that was dreamy. Super light touch and no slop.

I built a baritone telemaster afterwards and I used a MIJ Tremolo for it. The feel of the MIJ is no where near as good as the AVRI, its really quite awful to be honest.

The tremolo arm has quite a bit of slop in the collet, I'm assuming I should buy the AVRI trem collet and arm for this.

The most irritating part is how stiff the action is and how much force needs to be used to manipulate the arm, I'm thinking this comes down to the spring tension. With the tension screw bottomed out its still very stiff.

I see another part of the problem can be the pivot plate, I took that out and made sure it was dead flat with a long leveling file and rounded/polished it the way Dave Wronski has his.

Does anyone know of a source that sells AVRI springs?

From how I'm imagining it interacting, I need a spring that is a bit longer that compresses with less force required.

I see guitarpartsresource has a spring for sale but it doesn't say if its AVRI or not.

[JVG]

Not sure about that one either, but Darren Rileys looks to have the American Spring:

http://darrenriley.com/store/jaguarjazz ... 019307000/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Could also try Angela Music or Parts is Parts.

[repoman]

Nice

Thank you

[andy_tchp]

The tremolo arm has quite a bit of slop in the collet, I'm assuming I should buy the AVRI trem collet and arm for this.

No. The threads for the collet are not the same size in the Japan assembly (10mm) as the AVRI (3/8") - the collets are not interchangeable.

I would expect this to be the case for other parts of the assembly, most certainly anything requiring a threaded fastener, given the differences in metric vs imperial thread size and pitch.


I would (and did) throw it out and buy a whole AVRI vibrato assembly + arm, after busting the collet completely out of the plate several times mid-song (even with loc-tite applied - the threads were THAT poorly cut.)

[Danley]

Just get a full AVRI; I tried the spring swap, it doesn't change things up much. AVRI has much better feel, response, stability, string spacing, nicer looking chrome, better arm attachment... Plus I've had two MIJs that were DoA and would not stay in tune, no matter how they were adjusted.

[fisonic]

AVRI + staytrem arm.

[monsterdonkey]

I put the Mastery trem on my MIJ and I enjoy it very much. Having never tried an AVRI I can't comment, but it's nicer to use than MIJ, VM and CP. It was worth the $ for me because I enjoy it every single time I use it. My MIJ sits on the bench and I transferred the Staytrem collet I first tried to my VM.

[tonehungry]

might try the staytrem and AVRI combo on my MIJ jazz master....thanks for the info guys

[repoman]

Just get a full AVRI; I tried the spring swap, it doesn't change things up much. AVRI has much better feel, response, stability, string spacing, nicer looking chrome, better arm attachment... Plus I've had two MIJs that were DoA and would not stay in tune, no matter how they were adjusted.

I'm curious how though, it must come down to merely the rate of the spring (assuming the pivot plate is well machined), theres hardly anything going on mechanically with the offset tremolo design.
I don't have any tuning issues with it, just the 'feel' ...tuning issues are 99% of the time a poorly cut/dressed nut.

[Danley]

Nope, the MIJ trem was rickety; it was visible and made audible clicks, one if you even slightly moved it, the other at the top of the range. I'm talking two brand new MIJ trems. The problem is the pivots are not well filed. Filing the pivot helped but was tedious. AVRI fixed. I've had Squier and Allparts trems that were similarly shoddy.

There are also geometry differences between the trems, mostly centered, again, on the pivot.