Finally got my LTD

demanufactured

Got it back after having to bring it back to get the neck pickup replaced.

all is great , great sound for riffing and a nice fat lead tone, waiting on a black whammy bar which is on order as the origional was misplaced in the shop(gave me a gold one as a backuup lol)

just wondering if it would hurt to put a little bit of wd40 in the threads of the locking nut as sometimes if i divebomb the g string and low e go slightly out of tune , its easily fixed by a quick pull up on the bar.
Thiking maybe the wc40 will allow me to tighten it a little bit more , but id be afraid of overdoin it and ringing the threads

Voodu Child

Assuming it's set up properly (which it might not be), it sounds like your trem has a false neutral. That's pretty common, it just means the knife edge is overly-squared where it should be fairly sharp, and when you divebomb it can return to one position, and if you pull up, it returns to a different position.

It can be fixed by filing it into the right shape, but i wouldn't recommend doing this. Just compensate by, for example always dropping the bar when you're tuning it. Then, whenever you think its out of tune, drop the bar and it should settle into the right position.

Your locking nut doesnt need to be particularly tight FWIW. Hand-tighten it, and give a tiny extra turn with the allen key, should be enough.

demanufactured

Its not worn knife edges , its a brand new guitar , plus i have come across this before on my jackson,its definatly thelocking nut as you can hear the strings going "ding" as the tension up in the nut.

Voodu Child

Thats your likely problem above, take it or leave it.

Strings won't slip through a locking nut unless there is a distinct groove worn in the pad from over-tightening. The pad and nut are flat surfaces, once it's a little more than hand-tightened, it will grip the string perfectly. Over tightening will just strip the threads or allen head.

A knife edge doenst have to be 'worn', its just not sharp enough, very common manufacturing flaw straight out of the box, especially on lower end guitars.

Doctor J

Surely if the trem wasn't returning to the same point it would affect the tuning of all the strings, not just two? Is it only the two going out of tune and you've checked the other strings with a tuner or are those two noticeably going more out of tune than the others but they're all going out a little?

If there's a pinging sound from the nut when you do a divebomb then it's definitely slipping at the nut. Try swapping the pads around, see if the problem follows the pad. Work through the problem that way, try to eliminate parts from the equasion. Are you using a hybrid set of strings by any chance, heavy bottom, light top?

Voodu Child

Doctor J wrote:

Surely if the trem wasn't returning to the same point it would affect the tuning of all the strings, not just two? Is it only the two going out of tune and you've checked the other strings with a tuner or are those two noticeably going more out of tune than the others but they're all going out a little?

If there's a pinging sound from the nut when you do a divebomb then it's definitely slipping at the nut. Try swapping the pads around, see if the problem follows the pad. Work through the problem that way, try to eliminate parts from the equasion. Are you using a hybrid set of strings by any chance, heavy bottom, light top?

The smaller (thinner, lighter) the string, the greater the pitch will change as a result of any other change (tension or length). So all strings will be affected, but the lighter ones more noticeably.

I've never in all my years of playing floyd roses had a string slip through the locking nut. Even on my crappiest, oldest guitar, i could snip the string at the tuner, and pull up with the bar as hard as I can, and the string will break somewhere before it comes slipping though the nut.

Compare me pulling on the bar as hard as i can, with the fairly minimal tension on the string when you dive bomb, and I don't see how this could be the problem, unless, as ive said, you've worn a groove in the pad from years of overtightening.

Doctor J

OK, but it's his G and low E, not the high E. Either way, that pinging from a nut is a pretty recogniseable sound. If he says he hears it, you have to take him at his word, no?

Voodu Child

Ah right. Strings can go out of tune different amounts depending how well they are stretched, and this will make a mess of trying to diagnose a problem, but I did make sure to say 'provided the guitar is set up properly' in my first post

Well, anyway, that's my diagnosis/best-guess, i've seen it on tonnes of guitars, even some of my good Ibanez's. Usually I just play around it, instead of messing around filing the edge. I'll leave it to the OP to decide if it's worth heeding or not..

demanufactured

Ok , an update on the situation , it turns out It's only the low E thats slipping , i tried swapping round the pads between the 2 higher strings and the lower strings , still the same.
Could it be possible that the nut was cut too deep on that particular string???

Short of bringing it back to the shop(again) , is there anything else i could try?

Doctor J

Try pushing the string down behind the nut, ie between the nut and the tuner. Does it go sharp?

demanufactured

No it dosent, it only does it if i dive bomb or if i pull all the way up on the bar

Doctor J

So there's no pinging sound coming from the nut at all then?

demanufactured

no not if i press down on it behind the nut

Doctor J

Is there any pinging noise coming from the nut at all - ie if you push behind the nut, if you pull on the bar, push down, whatever.

What I'm getting at is this, are you saying there is no problem with the nut at all now?

demanufactured

lol i thnik ya may have misunderstood me , its only happening with the low E string now , it does it if you dive bomb then pull all the way up on the bar , i think i may have kinda fixed some of the problem though.

I loosened the little bar that sits just behind the nut(between the nut and tuners, it goes over all the strings)

It dosent seem to be as bad now if i give the bar a bit of abuse , it stil slips but not as much as before

Gary ITR

Another thing is that the strings may not be in the block properly. When you put new strings on a floyd rose you need to tune up and the pull the crap out of the strings to make sure they are bedded in properly, then tune again and stick the like nuts on then.

And fwiw I agree with Voodoo_child on the lock nuts, there is no need to over tighten them at all

demanufactured

yeah i dont really tighten em that much just enough to stop em moving.

I have noticed something too though that my be worth mentioning.
When i start playing the guitar say in the evening after work , it seems that the string slips like its been doing , then later if iv'e been playing for a while , it dosent seem to be as bad , as if its warmed up or something.

Gary ITR

You'd be as well just having it set up, the whole point of the floyd rose is that these things don't happen

demanufactured

Messing about there i just figured out what was happening, The nut was moving!!!!!

So i undid the pads and checked the screws , yeh you guessed it, the one nearer the lower strings was loose , and hey presto , the threads were worn in the wood , so i toook out the screw and put some loctite on it , put it back in , gonna leave it a while and see if it works , if not either a slightly bigger screw or back to the shop again.