Wilkinson Vintage Strat Trems - sticky ball ends?

impmann

Hi All,

I've got a Wilkinson Vintage Strat trem which is quite a nice piece of kit but changing strings can be a ball ache (excuse the pun). The ball ends get stuck in the block meaning I need to shove an allen key down from the top to dislodge them.

Anyone got a demon dodge for solving this (other than buying a different trem unit)?

Ta!

Funkfingers

Is your vibrato sustain block made from cold rolled steel or something softer?

impmann

Funkfingers said:

Is your vibrato sustain block made from cold rolled steel or something softer?

I shall check tonight but I thought all of the Wilkinson vintage strat units with the staggered holes were steel... could be wrong, though! :-)

paulnb57

I use Fender 250’s strings which seems to help, I recall Fender used to produce “ bullet” ended strings to solve this very problem and to allow the string to seat in the trem hole more reliably than the usual cylindrical string end

Headphones

paulnb57 said:

I use Fender 250’s strings which seems to help, I recall Fender used to produce “ bullet” ended strings to solve this very problem and to allow the string to seat in the trem hole more reliably than the usual cylindrical string end

Quite apart from the three minute life, my experience was that fender bullets stuck in tremelos really well, while traditional strings didn't

gavin_axecaster

Standard Wilkinson blocks are zinc, but I think most you find for sale are sintered steel. Wilkinson offer a milled steel block but it doubles the price of the trem.

impmann

I’ve just dug it out… it’s zinc.
So time to find a better Trem!!