Jazzmaster tremelo spring

[Dennism]

Hello, this is maybe my second or third posting here. I hope someone has an idea on how to solve this issue.
The tremolo on my JM (okay, it's a vibrato, not tremolo) it seems I bend it up and down a long distance, but very little movement in pitch. A lot of work for nothin'.
I want to be able to work it less, and get a bit more traction on the vibrato action, similar to a Stratocaster. I realize that is not quite possible, but I was hoping to get a bit more like a Strat action.
I have one idea, how about switching out the spring, and installing a shorter spring, thereby lowering the arm closer to the body, and less movement of said arm would affect the pitch changing a bit more.
Make sense?
any ideas out there?

[novamax]

The vibrato Pitch depends mainly on the way of travel or change of string tension - not so much on spring rate. This can be steered with a longer or shorter lever.

The Jazzmaster was designed with hollowbody jazzboxes with Bigsby vibrato and the likes in mind. So to allow divebombs was not the primary design principle. It has a long arm to operate a short way of rather indirect tension change. This makes it a unit to be controlled to very five pitch, which is exactly why I appreciate it over a Strat vib - with its shorter arm, highly efficient tension change over quite a bit travel way. This makes a start trem rather the Neanderthal heavy, high impact club version of a vib (it can be controlled quite fine, but not as fine as an offset vib, IMHO).

So either get a Strat, or a JM with a Strat's trem (which will kill a lot of its character). Don't buy a Gretch and try to fit a Floyd Rose on it, either...

If you like the offset sound, a Mustang with its closer to a Strat vib might be a compromise out of both worlds. But to me, a mustang is not really what I play an offset for... (YMMV)

[hwestman]

Getting the arm closer to the body would limit downwards travel since the arm will hit the guitar surface earlier. So in order to get more downward range you need to do the opposite (at the expens of upwards travel).

With my setup which is a stock MIJ vibrato I can do something divebombish on the low E... I think thats about what you can expect

[CorporateDisguise]

There is also a screw right next to the trem arm which is a spring adjustment. If you loosen that, you may get a bit more travel.