Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Fine oversight

I've been frustrated by this since my first string change & re-tuning- this is an oversight Ibanez should address. The above pic shows my RG2228's FX Edge III bridge unit. Fine tuners A & B are effectively dysfunctional due to:

  1. Their location- these are placed at the center of the tail arch where the bridge is at its highest. There's very little play here because the tuner's vertical movement is limited by this clearance. It could barely manage a full rotation (in both directions) before it's either bucked by the arch's structure or maximized it's threaded allowance.*SIGH*
  2. Blockage by Part C- this is the bridge's action adjustment stud (together with the other two bigger counterparts on the unit's bass & treble sides). One's fingers are blocked by this protrusion when screwing the fine tuners down, so the fine tuners' already restricted leeway is further hindered. *SIGH* 
Recommendation: Ibanez should refine the mechanisms to make it more functional. As it is, Fine tuners A & B could not even address a half step (flat/ sharp) tuning anomaly. The bridge here could be replaced entirely with a hard tail type version. Ibanez's current derivative of this is its Gibraltar Standard. It's already engineered for a 7-string version featured in the RGA7 so the technology exists to vary the existing design. The entailing concern here would be tuning stability should the nut be the non-locking version to complement the Gibraltar Standard. Roller type nuts could be installed as an alternative complement.



We should also learn from Chris Broderick, whose 7-string customized Ibanez guitars feature a non-locking nut.

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