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OK, so I've had a little bit of time to play around with it. I recorded a quick video of the guitar before the swap, but events overtook me and we had to rearrange our apartment, so I imagine the 'after' version will sound different anyway because of the room change, which is a shame. But, it is what it is..
The first thing that surprised me was how just how light weight the bridge was: with the arm installed, it's maybe 2/3 the weight of a regular floyd without the arm. Otherwise, the install was obviously pretty straight forward, though somewhat surprisingly, the pivot posts use the same allen wrench as the intonation screws rather than the one for the nut which seems strange. I was disappointed that the nut needed shimming - I took off an R3 nut and installed the Ti R2 and had to raise it a decent amount to stop it fretting out on the first fret, and unless I'm totally missing the point, Floyd nuts differ in width not height? But with that sorted out:
The guitar is definitely, absolutely more resonant than it was before. I used the same strings so the comparison was as fair as possible (given I'm trusting my brain and my ears rather than some sort of signal analysis), and the guitar is louder and notes sustain longer. I was expecting the guitar to sound brighter, but (albeit early days) to my ears it doesn't which is fine by me. And the bridge feels great - the arm and fine tuners just have a smooth, positive feel to them rather than the slightly 'clunky' arm and 'gritty' tuners that regular floyds have. More Mercedes than Kia if you like!! I like the look of it, but now need to find knobs that match, I guess some sort of brushed aluminum or satin silver would be the closest...
So, is it better than a regular floyd? Yeah, I'd say it is absolutely. Is it worth the extra money? Nah, of course not
Is it cool? Subjective of course, but yeah, I think so. Would I install one again? If money was no object, yup no doubt at all.
The first thing that surprised me was how just how light weight the bridge was: with the arm installed, it's maybe 2/3 the weight of a regular floyd without the arm. Otherwise, the install was obviously pretty straight forward, though somewhat surprisingly, the pivot posts use the same allen wrench as the intonation screws rather than the one for the nut which seems strange. I was disappointed that the nut needed shimming - I took off an R3 nut and installed the Ti R2 and had to raise it a decent amount to stop it fretting out on the first fret, and unless I'm totally missing the point, Floyd nuts differ in width not height? But with that sorted out:
The guitar is definitely, absolutely more resonant than it was before. I used the same strings so the comparison was as fair as possible (given I'm trusting my brain and my ears rather than some sort of signal analysis), and the guitar is louder and notes sustain longer. I was expecting the guitar to sound brighter, but (albeit early days) to my ears it doesn't which is fine by me. And the bridge feels great - the arm and fine tuners just have a smooth, positive feel to them rather than the slightly 'clunky' arm and 'gritty' tuners that regular floyds have. More Mercedes than Kia if you like!! I like the look of it, but now need to find knobs that match, I guess some sort of brushed aluminum or satin silver would be the closest...
So, is it better than a regular floyd? Yeah, I'd say it is absolutely. Is it worth the extra money? Nah, of course not
Is it cool? Subjective of course, but yeah, I think so. Would I install one again? If money was no object, yup no doubt at all.
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