Tremolo Bridge replacement

[owen]

I have a Fender Maurader reissue which I really like. It has a tremolo bridge which is ....... not great - but standard Fender size and fittings etc.  I just played a student's PRS SE jobbie. The tremolo on that was really nice and fluid. Can anyone suggest a retrofit bridge which would get me moving in the right direction? Bass hardware, I could bore for Wales about it. Guitar stuff is something I have never taken a huge interest in. Maybe it is just a matter of setting it up properly.

 

TIA

[ezbass]

The PRS and Fender trems feel quite different in use, despite doing the same thing in a very similar manner. Do a search for PRS style trems and there are quite a few options, many reasonably priced. However, I would imagine that a decent straight Fender replacement from the likes of Gotoh, Hipshot, etc would be an upgrade on the one fitted and give a better resulting feel.

[Matt P]

I've not tried a PRS trem but a while back i swapped out the trem on a very cheap Encore strat copy and used a Wilkinson trem, they make one that has slightly diffferent mounting, rather than 6 round holes it has one round hole and 5 slots, this gives more of a smooth knife-edge feel, it seemed to work quite well, we went for the steel block version as well which may or may not have made a sonic difference (can of worms there)

 

the only thing to note is that the hole spacing for the screws is not standard across all trems, the trem didn't line up with the squier strat we tried it on, and for the encore we had to fill the original holes and re-drill.

 

This was the one I fitted (although I swear it was about half that price when i bought it)

 

they make more modern style ones though with the same 5+1 fitting style. full range HERE

 

Matt

[owen]

Thanks both. Given my appaling track record of bodging things or just not completing, probably picking up a 2nd hand PRS would be the obvious option. But now I know!