Fu-tone or Stone tone?

[Drew]

May as well add some content here:



Really hard to do this perfectly scientifically - I'm not playing the exact same riffs, I can't guarantee my pick attack is identical ehre... but it WAS the same strings and same amp settings, and to my ears there's a HAIR more presence to the attack here. Whether or not that's a good thing is subjective; honestly listening now on what's probably not a great monitoring chain, I might prefer the slightly rounder stock blocks. For me though this was about durability more than tone, so...

 

[gh0styboi]

I'll give you two reasons.

The simplest? It doesn't matter if it makes a difference or not, as long as people believe it does, and will pay a larger premium for it than the added cost of manufacturer. If you can put $20 in parts on a guitar and sell it for an extra $100, you do it.

The more nuanced? I mean, honestly, I suspect it's mostly the reason above. I think it's awfully hard to disentangle mass from material, and to do a TRULY objective comparison of this stuff... but my subjective experience is that materials do change response at the margins. Going from the stock Ibanez Lo Pro block to a heavier bronze one did yield a thicker, more midrange-y, but also slightly darker and more compressed tone, to my ears, and getting a set of FU Tone titanium string blocks for use in a Floyd did seem to give a perceptible increase in attack and initial "snap"... but we're talking like 1-2% change at the margins. Is it the difference between shit tone and good tone? Absolutely not. If the move is in the right direction, though, could $50-100 or whatever a trem block goes for these days make you a little more happy with your tone, and would you get your money's worth from it? Quite possibly. It's not a hard swap to do, and the cost isn't THAT prohbitive - it's certainly worth a try, though I would keep your expectations pretty reasonable.

I try to keep this stuff in mind in general for most things hardware related. Some things are pure marketing BS, other things genuinely help, but in my experience, what I've found most commonly is that a bunch of things making a small difference add up to something more clearly noticeable. Usually expecting some single thing to just make an immediate night and day difference leads to disappointment...

 

[Drew]

I try to keep this stuff in mind in general for most things hardware related. Some things are pure marketing BS, other things genuinely help, but in my experience, what I've found most commonly is that a bunch of things making a small difference add up to something more clearly noticeable. Usually expecting some single thing to just make an immediate night and day difference leads to disappointment...

Marginal gains, basically. A brass block isn't the first thing I'd do to finesse the tone of a guitar I basically liked - that'd be pickups - and even then it might not be the RIGHT change for that particular guitar... but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

[tedtan]

Something else to consider is that those guitars are 70s designs and people thought heavier guitars were better then. They all wanted the heavy 10+ pound Les Pauls, added brass nuts and brass saddles to their guitars, heavier after market brass bridges (like the Leo Quan Bad Ass, etc.). It was a 70s thing.

So why would Ibanez (Artist, Musician, etc.), Yamaha, and others add heavy brass blocks to their guitars? It’s what sold back then.

 

[Matt08642]

I think it's all snake oil past the structural integrity of the material. Clearly if a material is crumbling or makes very poor contact with the bridge plate there will probably be stability issues, but aside from that I just can't care or hear a difference. Bought a brass block for my FR1000 as an experiment, the brass one weighed like 2x the stock block, and sounds the exact same. It's actually shittier because it's so big that I now have less range on the trem, and plan to switch it all back next string change.

Stock blocks: Good enough for Vai, Petrucci, Gilbert, EVH, etc.
Brass blocks: Peddled by a guy whose company name is fuck you tone

IMO the pot metal block and saddles on my Squier sound great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ All hail me, the king of impure tone:



(Bonus 20 years of soldering ground connections poorly as a teen adding to the tone)

 

[Drew]

Stock blocks: Good enough for Vai, Petrucci, Gilbert, EVH, etc.
Brass blocks: Peddled by a guy whose company name is fuck you tone

To be fair, it used to be Floyd Upgrades, and I suspect the name change was driven by threats of legal action from Floyd Rose... who now ALSO makes upgrade trem blocks, but I believe always used bronze, just a smaller block than the FU design.

 

[Matt08642]

To be fair, it used to be Floyd Upgrades, and I suspect the name change was driven by threats of legal action from Floyd Rose... who now ALSO makes upgrade trem blocks, but I believe always used bronze, just a smaller block than the FU design.

Damn FU = Floyd Upgrades is news to me My bad on that one.

Yeah I got an OFR block since it was in stock in Canada. At least when I take it out and put the old block back in, it will be a very aesthetic paperweight for my desk

 

[ThunderUnderground]

I'll give you two reasons.

The simplest? It doesn't matter if it makes a difference or not, as long as people believe it does, and will pay a larger premium for it than the added cost of manufacturer. If you can put $20 in parts on a guitar and sell it for an extra $100, you do it.

Something else to consider is that those guitars are 70s designs and people thought heavier guitars were better then. They all wanted the heavy 10+ pound Les Pauls, added brass nuts and brass saddles to their guitars, heavier after market brass bridges (like the Leo Quan Bad Ass, etc.). It was a 70s thing.

So why would Ibanez (Artist, Musician, etc.), Yamaha, and others add heavy brass blocks to their guitars? It’s what sold back then.

Its certainly true that these things can be used to upsell a product, and if successful, the resulting tone is mostly a psychological thing rather than a clear cut audible difference in the guitar. That in itself of course isn't necessarily a bad thing if it encourages the player to use the instrument more or generally feel happier about owning it. So i think from either a sonic or psychological perspective, adding these things to the instrument isn't a bad thing. Whether you are willing to pay more for the instrument or if you even claim to hear any difference at all is entirely subjective.

With regards to the 70's instruments use of brass, again it certainly is true that it was believed a heavier instrument would sound better or hold more sustain/resonance etc etc which is not exactly accurate.

So with that said, il pivot back to my previous mention of my own Ibanez VBT700. The guitar is from 2007 so there's no 70's brass hype going on, R&D in the subject will have improved greatly in that time frame, i own the 2007 catalogue that this instrument is featured in and there is never one mention of a brass block in the body of the guitar. So why does it exist? Why not just mount the Gibraltar bridge straight on to the wood. If it was used for marketing there would have been a mention of it in the catalogue, but there's not.

Another thing il add, and its not something i have personal experience with but i have read about. The difference between the Ibanez Edge and Floyd Rose bridge, one being cast and machined ZAMAK, the other being machined steel. Ive often seen comment's from people claiming the two sound different from each other. The Edge bridge sounds darker and the Floyd Rose can sound quite bright in comparison. This may only exist in an acoustic environment of course and i have no frame of reference but its just something else to consider.

Finally, id like to say that im not trying to be argumentative or overly forward with what im saying, i have a degree in mechanics so im genuinely interested in these things from a scientific standpoint. Im always open to being wrong and i don't care if i look like a clown in the process, if im wrong it just means i learned something and if others are reading this then they will learn something too.

 

[ThunderUnderground]

I try to keep this stuff in mind in general for most things hardware related. Some things are pure marketing BS, other things genuinely help, but in my experience, what I've found most commonly is that a bunch of things making a small difference add up to something more clearly noticeable. Usually expecting some single thing to just make an immediate night and day difference leads to disappointment...

I think this is the most sound approach, a block on its own might not provide much, however a brass block with a brass trem claw and brass claw screws might yield a more fruitful result. I would personally look to upgrade all contact points on the instrument for maximum return on investment.

Again though, the change provided is entirely subjective.

 

[Drew]

Finally, id like to say that im not trying to be argumentative or overly forward with what im saying, i have a degree in mechanics so im genuinely interested in these things from a scientific standpoint. Im always open to being wrong and i don't care if i look like a clown in the process, if im wrong it just means i learned something and if others are reading this then they will learn something too.

No, it's totally cool. There's arguing to be a dick, and arguing to expand your understanding of a subject. My sense is you're doing the later.

I legitimately don't know, though, why they did that. This was definitely after the availability of aftermarket brass blocks, so maybe it was driven by an Ibanez artist or something? Wild guess though.

 

[Drew]

Damn FU = Floyd Upgrades is news to me My bad on that one.

Yeah I got an OFR block since it was in stock in Canada. At least when I take it out and put the old block back in, it will be a very aesthetic paperweight for my desk

There's that!

Yeah, as you might imagine, they don't talk about it much these days. The branding is, well, a little sophomoric, but welcome to hard rock and metal, right?

 

[eaeolian]

May as well add some content here:



Really hard to do this perfectly scientifically - I'm not playing the exact same riffs, I can't guarantee my pick attack is identical ehre... but it WAS the same strings and same amp settings, and to my ears there's a HAIR more presence to the attack here. Whether or not that's a good thing is subjective; honestly listening now on what's probably not a great monitoring chain, I might prefer the slightly rounder stock blocks. For me though this was about durability more than tone, so...

When you're playing high, your hand is further back toward the bridge after you change to the Ti blocks.. So it's brighter for a reason.
I mean, I'm not telling anyone to *do* anything. I'm saying once *I* started looking (and listening at a deeper level), the only things that make an audible difference in my tone overall are pickups. Especially when using gain (as, let's be real, 90% of the audience here does in ludicrous quantities).
Does changing the block change the tone for you? Go for it.

 

[gh0styboi]

When you're playing high, your hand is further back toward the bridge after you change to the Ti blocks.. So it's brighter for a reason.
I mean, I'm not telling anyone to *do* anything. I'm saying once *I* started looking (and listening at a deeper level), the only things that make an audible difference in my tone overall are pickups. Especially when using gain (as, let's be real, 90% of the audience here does in ludicrous quantities).
Does changing the block change the tone for you? Go for it.

Gain is for sure another massive factor. Use enough gain and nothing makes a difference. It's why I've been trying to back down on my gain as much as possible without sacrificing the sound I like - it sort of makes everything vanilla past a point.

 

[Drew]

When you're playing high, your hand is further back toward the bridge after you change to the Ti blocks.. So it's brighter for a reason.
I mean, I'm not telling anyone to *do* anything. I'm saying once *I* started looking (and listening at a deeper level), the only things that make an audible difference in my tone overall are pickups. Especially when using gain (as, let's be real, 90% of the audience here does in ludicrous quantities).
Does changing the block change the tone for you? Go for it.

That is very likely part of it, but I think there's more going on here than JUST that. And I think the changes I've heard when swapping blocks, while still mild, have been more pronounced than this. I unfortunately don't have any video of that.

But yeah, once you start adding gain into the picture, it does get harder to hear. I'm definitely not in the camp that this is an IMPORTANT variable in your tone, just that it's a not-nonexistent one.

 

[ThunderUnderground]

No, it's totally cool. There's arguing to be a dick, and arguing to expand your understanding of a subject. My sense is you're doing the later.

I legitimately don't know, though, why they did that. This was definitely after the availability of aftermarket brass blocks, so maybe it was driven by an Ibanez artist or something? Wild guess though.

Yeah im just curious to try get to the bottom of some of these things which is why im interested in different opinions on this topic. I think the real definitive answer would be to hook the guitar up to your DAW and use a spectrum analyser to A/B the signal and you can visually see a change. I think that's the only way to really put the subject to bed.

Im actually considering making different inserts for my VBT700 as i have billet titanium and aluminium laying around already, i could also make a block from maple and install that in to the guitar so you could see how it sounds without the big metal insert. I just find it strange that sometimes manufacturers will add these things but sometimes not.

Going back to OP's first post, he notes that he has blocked the bridge, i rebuilt my Ibanez 540P recently and decided to use an aftermarket backstop to stabilize the bridge, i already have 2 OEM Ibanez backstops so i wanted to try an aftermarket one and see how it was. When using these backstops you need to install a rubber pad on the block otherwise when you push down on the bar and move the block away from the backstop, it makes a loud knocking when it comes back in to contact with the backstop again.

Basically i put my guitar together for a test fit before final assembly and i opted to leave the rubber pad off the sustain block to see how it sounded, i noticed a big change in the sound with regards to acoustics and also generally i could feel the sustain through the guitar more. I wasn't able to test it fully and several other changes had been made so i cant say it was all down to the backstop being in direct contact with the block. But if you consider the nature of a floating bridge, there's not a lot of contact with the bridge and the body, you could calculate the surface area between the knife ages and posts but i would say its 1mm or less as a guess.

By using the backstop you literally increase the surface area of the contact points and the ability to transfer tone/sustain through the bridge and in to the body of the guitar, it only really works with no rubber pad so you would have to toss the trem bar out the window.

In the photo ive installed the rubber pad because the guitar is mostly finished now but if i wanted to block the bridge off and increase tone/sustain then these aftermarket backstops are like $30 and it increases surface area with regards to bridge/body contact points. Just another thought to add in to the already confusing sometimes snake-oily mix.

ps. i added the brass trem claw for the convenient bolt on earth wire, not to chase tone.

 

[gnoll]

The best tone starts with the best natural tone.

a bunch of things making a small difference add up to something more clearly noticeable.

This sums up how I think about it. If it's a guitar I care about and I'm gonna record things I care about with it, then I will gladly spend some time and money on hardware upgrades. Even if the tone difference is relatively small.

 

[Drew]

Yeah im just curious to try get to the bottom of some of these things which is why im interested in different opinions on this topic. I think the real definitive answer would be to hook the guitar up to your DAW and use a spectrum analyser to A/B the signal and you can visually see a change. I think that's the only way to really put the subject to bed.

I think you'd have to take it a step further and also use some sort og mecanical means of striking the strings, but yeah this would help quantify the difference... though I also think the audio itself should probably be enough, if it were to make a perceptible difference.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Of the 10 guitars I own, only 2 have floyds. I have no interest in messing with them beyond setup and string changes.

So I got no dog in this fight, but I'm putting this here, because I came across it a while back and didn't see it in this thread yet.

 

[eaeolian]

Random sampling the tones, I don't hear an appreciable difference - it just all sounds freakin' great. But, whatever works for you.

 

[Gain_Junkie93]

Show me on the doll where aftermarket tone blocks touched you guys Jesus