De-tuning strat

Ostrom

Apologies, this is my first grown up guitar My strat goes slightly flat after about a minute of play, g string in particular. The tremelo feels quite loose - looser than my aria copy - so i have no basis for comparison with others. Any ideas of a possible source - faulty tuners? Tremelo too loose?

Alanstrainor

How high does the tremolo sit off the body?
Eg


On my strats i have them all flush against the body, it's more to do with preference than it being right or wrong, but having the bridge floating like the above can cause tuning problems.

Owen

Check the basics first. Have you enough string wrapped around the machinehead/tuner at the headstock? If you don't it will slip all the time. Do you string bend? If you do, it will pull it out of tune too. I have a tendancy to bend the G string more than others when doing solos - could be a partial explanation.

Demeyes

Your nut might not be cut very well, the strings could be getting caught there which will cause tuning instability. Put some vaseline in the nut slots or else get a new graphite nut cut.
The bridge might be causing trouble if it's not setup well. The vintage style trems are easy to get to grips with, you should be able to find a vid on youtube describing how to get it level, as well as setting the intonation and action.

Johnny Storm

You may also need to lubricate the nut. A little bit of Vaseline or Chapstick will do the trick. And have you stretched the strings?
See here: http://www.fender.com/support/stratocaster.php

Edit: Too late again!!!!

Wooden Jesus

If you changed the strings lately you might just need to stretch them out especially if their lighter guage ones. Just pull each string off the fret board for about 15 seconds. If its a new guitar aswell youll need to get the intonation looked at, my strat was a disaster for that when i got it

punchdrunk

I have my strat set so the bridge is near flat to the body,if i yank the trembar hard upwards (easy boys ) I'll get a semitone out of it,not more
i.e it'll bend up by "one fret" any more and tuning becomes an issue

have John Moriarty put a bone nut on it for you,well worth the money

Ostrom

Thanks everyone, i'll have proper internet access in a few days and will check out some instructions. The bridge angle is quite high so i think that might be the problem. Strings were well stretched, the heads have about 4 turns of string on them, so it must be the bridge. I do tend to bend a bit high so that might be contributing.

Johnny Storm

Betcha lubricating the nut fixes the problem

Ostrom

Seems to have settled down now. Lowered the angle on the bridge and greased the nut, thanks for all the tips!