The EVHII Holy Grail

[Guest]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

Great! Can't wait to see those.

Are they marked "Made In USA" similar to mine being marked "Made In Japan"?

[Hossman]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

My blue label is Marked "Made In USA". My red is not marked USA or Japan, so maybe my red is Japan ??? I don't know.

[abalonevintage]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

You guys need to learn some facts and history before dismissing others so quickly.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Likewise......... [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

The thing you added was:

1. The bridge on Eddies guitar is the same as Harris'. (I still want to see a better photo.)
2. There were Jap FR bridges MARKED Floyd Rose.

Sorry, I meant to say "pre-pro", reffering to the my two non-tuner trems (...saying they were the last two versions). The REAL last version was only used on POS Kramers and I don't believe was ever offered as an aftermarket item.

I'll eat some crow, but first, I want some "Bodacious" or "Dreamland" Bar-b-que sauce!!!!!!! PLEASE!

What do you mean it's not that complicated? You just ruined my weekend! My social life! My retirement plan! My........

Ok, now I've got MORE questions.....

1. How did Ed end up with a Jap un-Floyd?
2. Did Ed get the bridge in Japan?
3. Was Gotoh trying to "woo" Eddie....or Floyd Rose?
4. Were the Jap Floyds made for the Jap market only. (Like other things.)
5. Were the Floyds made at Floyd Roses' request?
6. Did Floyd Rose Lisence his bridge?
6. Did the Japs do this on their own?
7. Did the Japs copy Floyd Roses' design?
8. Did Floyd copy the Japs design?
9. Did Floyd have them made in Japan because he could not keep up with demand?
10. Did Floyd [img]graemlins/bs.gif[/img] us? Were they MOSTLY made in Japan?
11. Did Ed have any other un-Floyds on his guitars?
12. Did Ed tell Rockinger to take a hike after he got the Jap trem?

......and MANY more questions to come!!!!

The pre-pro FRs do not have molded bridgeplates. The Schaller made FRs HAVE molded bridgepates. (remember, they say Made in Germany on the bottom) So I believe someone other than Floyd Rose himself did harris' bridge. I really need to compare it to my Schaller fine tuner prototype bridge.

The (Gotoh?) bridge block of Harris' is not big. Of the four "known" Floyd Rose block sizes, it most closely resembles the next to the smallest.

Given the fact the Japs copied the Kahler (EVEN THE INSTALLATION AND SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS 100%) I wouldn't be suprised at anything now....

Six pre-production Floyds. Two "red" marked USA.



Six Floyd tops.



Two Floyds. One with ultra hip Chrome" block....with "string through" holes. (?) "Red" label one has same type logo as Jap one with no country of origin. I believe the Gold one "could" be Jap because it did not have the "fit and Finish" of the chrome one. However, no other Floyd I've seen has.....I don't know if we'll get an answer to that anytime soon.....This photo is from 1992....

After going back and looking at all the photos, we may have it backwards.....All of the Pre-pro Jap trems may be engraved "Floyd Rose" and all the US one are blank....Oh boy.....




Rockinger off of 1982 Kramer Pacer. All brass.



I have another Floyd Rose bridge in storage that has fine tuners and the "big" trem block and other oddities. It is made by Schaller. I'll see if I can get a photo of it in a few days.

HELP, HOSSMAN! I'm getting cross-eyed!!!!!

-eric

[ December 22, 2002, 05:55 AM: Message edited by: abalonevintage ]

[trillian guitars]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

do you want me to ask floyd about all this, eric?

[abalonevintage]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

Go for it!

[Guest]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

You know, know...we might actually learn something before we are done here!

Great pictures abalone...this kind of stuff is gold. You should create a section on your website to try and boil down this story.

I'll take a shot at your questions. However, I don't *know* anything so it is all educated guessing and theorizing.

1. How did Ed end up with a Jap un-Floyd? Do we know that that bridge is a Jap model? If you look at his first non-fine tuning bridges on the black & yellow guitar...those really look homemade. The one on Harris' guitar and on the EVH guitar pictured (I realize you are not convinced but I am going to go on the premis because to my eyes, they are identical in appearance) is not garage made. I believe this trem is of unknown origns, correct? Do we know for sure if it was Japanese made/US made or Gotoh/Floyd other?

2. Did Ed get the bridge in Japan? Still not convinced it is Japanese. I don't think we've determined this for sure.

3. Was Gotoh trying to "woo" Eddie....or Floyd Rose? Maybe both? I am sure Gotoh would have liked to get the contract to produce Floyd units. Maybe the Harris/EVH trem was an attempt to build an example? Maybe they were done before Floyd had his ready? However, if Floyd had the patent on the fine tuning technical design (which the Harris trem follows) wouldn't they have to abide by that? Or maybe because at this period they were still in early stages and Floyd was still a guy in his garage and other manufacturers took liberties knowing Floyd didn't have the resource to legally pursue them for infringement? If they were going to do that, anyone including Japanese manufacturing, would they bother using the patent #, logo, and the *exact* design. Most cheap copies I have seen (of anything really) have been just that...cheap imitations with cut corners and poor quality. My Japanese Floyd Rose is identical in every respect to the ones in your pics that you are saying are US made.

4. Were the Jap Floyds made for the Jap market only. (Like other things.) Possibly. However, my Japanese Made Floyd bridge was installed on a US Charvel from the factory so....... Maybe they ordered it from Japan.

5. Were the Floyds made at Floyd Roses' request? I am sure the first ones were. But I think we are past that point now where he was banging them out in his garage. We are at the point in the timeline where we are trying to figure out which manufacturers were doing what when where, right?

6. Did Floyd Rose Lisence his bridge? He filed his patent in January of 1977. He was granted the patent in 1979. I think for a period after that he was looking for a manufacturer to go into production. I am not sure at that early juncture if any licsensing issues were in play. It seems to me that up until all the other manufacturers began putting out their private labelled trems with the "licsensed by..." stamps on them there were no other Floyd models available. So through the early 80's...the only Floyds available were real Floyds? Is this true?

6. Did the Japs do this on their own? Well we know the trems were at least available in the US. We know they used the Floyd logo, the patent number, and the basic design. This would tend to point to the conclusion that Floyd Rose trems were manufactured in Japan under contract. Do we have any proof that Floyd did *not* contract with a Japanese company to manufacture the bridges? I think we have substancial evidence to support the case for a Japanese production run of bridges available for sale in the U.S.

7. Did the Japs copy Floyd Roses' design? Didn't everyone? :-)

8. Did Floyd copy the Japs design? Not likely. If Floyd had his patent application in as of Jan of 1977 it was probably in development at least a year or two prior to that. I don't have any doubt that Floyd Rose (the man) is where this story starts.

9. Did Floyd have them made in Japan because he could not keep up with demand? A very good theory. I am sure that he was shopping manufacturing options thinking that he'd go at it alone and run the operation without a larger sponsor/distributor (as Kramer would become) I am wondering if the Schaller deal was struck by Floyd (as a potential Japanese manufacturing partner may have been) or did that happen via Kramer? A loose analogy could be how Mike Soldano first had the Hot Rod series of amps manufactured in Japan. Upon seeing the quality (or lack thereof) controls being not up to his standard, the deal was cut short and they started making them in the states. Possibly a Japanese manufacturer may have started the ball when (for whatever reason) Schaller came into the picture and offered a better deal/better quality/etc.

10. Did Floyd us? Were they MOSTLY made in Japan?
In the beginning? Quite possibly. You have shown us some examples of the trems made in the states. Who made these? They look manufactured as opposed to hammered out in the garage. So it is possible that a short run was made here and realized it would cost a fortune to continue US production, a Japanese partner was enlisted?

11. Did Ed have any other un-Floyds on his guitars? I thought I heard he used Wonderbars to record with. This is unconfirmed.

12. Did Ed tell Rockinger to take a hike after he got the Jap trem? Still don't know what Japanese trem we are referring to here. But the Kramer collectors and historians seem to concur that Rockinger did their best to get Van Halen on the books but were resistant to his input. Floyd Rose somehow got in there and we know how it went from there.

So I guess I had more questions than answers but I think a few of these theories are worth investigation.

In the end, only Floyd Rose the man can accurately answer these questions. If only we could get into his file cabinet!

I'd sure like to know. All we can do ourselves is go by gear we own and pictures and evidence we can dig up.

[abalonevintage]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

I think you're confusing Wonderbar with Wankerbar. [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Many of my questions were somewhat rhetorical....AND YOU STILL TRIED TO ANSWER THEM!

I'm Impressed.....

Who are you anyway? ( Hopefully not William Rockinger III)

Once again, the Japs are notorious for copying other people designs. (Sometimes asked to by unscrupulous people on this side of the pond.) The Kahler they did was EXACTLY like the US Kahler. Gary Kahler went after them, spent a lot of money, and ultimately conceded he would be on the loosing end regardless of the outcome. (International litigation like this can go on forever.) A few years after the Floyd came out the Japs were making all kinds of variations on a theme. WAY more than us. Crap, you would split a gut laughing at some of the silly designs!!!! Look in the Jap guitar mags, humorous....

You might be surprised at how professional a bridge Mr. Floyd could make in his garage. All it would take is.....

1. Bend pre-dimensioned steel plate, drill holes, bevel, grind and tumble.
2. Get saddles die cast.
3. Have parts chrome plated.
4. Assemble and stick paper label on.
5. Sell for $200.00

The two "black block" trems are actually spray painted black.

'Nother point. With many companies (like Charvel) ordering Jap Gotoh tuners, etc. It would be understandable that they may also import SOME type of Jap bridge.

I just saw on Robert Witte's site an ad for non-tuner Floyd Rose trems from 1982. I couldn't read the "Jap" text, but the logo on the ad was Fernandez!!!!!!!! great.... [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] Didn't the Brad Gillis model Fernandez have a pre-pro Floyd bridge?

-eric

[ December 22, 2002, 12:15 PM: Message edited by: abalonevintage ]

[Hossman]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

I could not read the add either DOHHH. but it was a earlk Floyd add I thought was interesting so I sent it to Robert Witte to place on his site [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
I will see if I can get it read this week.

[abalonevintage]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

What? Are you taking extracurricular night classes or something????

Here is a photo I took of Harris' bridge. Note the "rounding" of the edges on the bridgeplate. Certainly looks die cast....This photo has more contrast that TA's, so you can see the detail better. Unfortunately it is a scan of a photo and I could not adjust the brightness out of it.



Phillips head height adjustment screws? [img]graemlins/nono.gif[/img]

-eric

[ December 22, 2002, 02:37 PM: Message edited by: abalonevintage ]

[BigDaddyD]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

For the record I was the high bidder on a non fine tuner floyd that someone here posted a pic of that was on Ebay. The auction got cancelled on me for "...has been ended early by eBay for violating one or more of our policy violation." I wonder what that was about.

[Genebaby]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

That wasn't the one from Australia was it?

[trillian guitars]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

from what i understood, eddie had the first prototype floyd bridge...and floyd kept giving him more as he changed designs...this would explain the differences....

[Hossman]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

Here is the purple charvel and notice the rockinger trem. I believe EVH went with Floyd not only because he like it but for friendship and political purposes to. Possibly Floyd coped the idea from Kramer [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Hossman]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

First issue Floyd Blue Tag on block


Second issue Floyd Red Tag on block

[BigDaddyD]

Re: The EVHII Holy Grail

Genebaby,

Are you referring to my post?