American Original Floyd Rose?

[scotty]

What is this guy talking about? @45 seconds he talks about his Floyd Rose.

http://www.bcrich.com/video_billyRiker.html

[StukaJU87]

I guess the Floyd was an American design, though I thought they were manufactured in Germany.

[rjohnstone]

Yes, Floyd Rose is an American and so is the company.
He contracted Schaller to do all the manufacturing.
Very common practice.
But I would never call a Floyd Rose trem an American OFR.
We all know it's the German built ones that kick ass.

[heartfielder]

Schaller = Germany

[Axewielder]

What about the really early ones? Did he subcontract that work out to Schaller from day one?

[pro-fusion]

I have to think Floyd built the earliest hand-built ones that guys like EVH were using. But I'm pretty sure Schaller built them all after they went into production. On the other hand, somebody had to be doing the casting/tempering etc. even on the prototypes... I doubt that Floyd had a metal casting plant in his garage.

[rjohnstone]

The original ones were not cast, they were milled.
Milling and drilling raw steel base plates is not to difficult with the proper machine.
Even the current base plates and blocks are milled.
The FRII is cast.

[Cleveland Metal]

Is there a page that has the misc floyds on it that ID's them?

I've been on Audiozone.

I have a few slightly different ones and am curious about them. I even have an old rockinger tremolo system. haha

[texasfury]

How difficult would it be for a machinist to set up a CNC program to spit these out from pure steel blocks?

[JacksonCharvelESP]

"It has this really nice silver thing around the edges.":ROTF:

[Sanctuary]

"It has this really nice silver thing around the edges.":ROTF:

Yeah...it's called a fucking bevel!

[lerxstcat]

Is there a page that has the misc floyds on it that ID's them?

I've been on Audiozone.

I have a few slightly different ones and am curious about them. I even have an old rockinger tremolo system. haha

I have a Rockinger trem too! It's a drop-in replacement for a Strat trem, and doesn't have knife edges but 2 needle bearings that act as the pivot points. It is pretty cool, actually, and still works great.

[Newc]

USA-made Floyds were made by Floyd himself. One was given to EVH, and he gave a couple to some other guys. According to an interview I read a few years back, he knew a guy that had some metalworking equipment and he let FR use it to build his bridge. Once Kramer picked up the license, Schaller got the manufacturing contract.

I work in metal-stamping, and yes, it is possible to stamp out all the parts of an OFR from a solid block of steel - the saddles (both halves), the baseplate (probably a 5 or 6-stage progressive die - 1 rough outline cut, 2 punch holes and cut the pivot points, 3 pre-bend the tail, 4 finalize the tail, 5 cut it off the end).

We don't do recessed holes in our stuff like the OFR has for the block bolts, so I'd imagne they have a mill section in the die that does that, or a separate process.


The guy claiming to have a USA-made OFR probably has an old Kramer-distributed OFR with the Neptune NJ address on the box.

The "shiny part that goes around the edge" is not a bevel, it's where the excess steel was cut off in the stamping process. All our stuff has it - it's smooth on the top half and rough on the bottom half. If it was milled with a spinning blade/cutter, it would be smooth from top to bottom.

[Sanctuary]

The "shiny part that goes around the edge" is not a bevel, it's where the excess steel was cut off in the stamping process.

Did you actually watch the video? 00:35 is where he's talking about the Ironbird Body itself. He's talking about the bevelling.

[QuantumRider]

It may be that the upload to youtube compressed the audio too much, but the guy's got horrible tone except when he's playing the Gunslinger