# Recessed vs non-recessed Floyd Rose?



## LEOVAN83

Hey guys,

I've been looking at some options for an "90's hard rock guitar" (I made a thread about it) and as you know, it's basically a strat shaped guitar, bolt-on neck, maple fretboard, single angled humbucker and a Floyd Rose.

I've seen some examples where the Floyd Rose is recessed (like on most guitars today) but most of these 80's guitars have a non-recessed FR. What's the difference between one and the other?


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## brp

Well, the reason for the whole advent of recessed trems is because when you try to "float" a non-recessed trem, it will inevitably raise the guitar's action as well as cause intonation issues due to the trem sitting angled. This can be mitigated with techniques like shimming the neck but the more obvious and practical solution was to recess the trem into the body via routing out a spot for it to sit lower than the main face of the body as well as some routed space under it to allow for pulling up on the bar to raise the pitch.
This way you can have a floating trem, (i.e. one that is not bottomed out against the body, so you can not only loosen the strings to lower pitch aka dive bomb but also pull up on the trem bar raising the strings pitch instead of lowering it.) without the issues of raising the action or having the trem set up angled to the body.

That's the positives of a recessed trem and the negatives of a non-recessed in a nutshell.

The positive of a non-recessed is, if you do not care about pulling up on the bar/raising string pitch with the trem and only want to dive bomb or some more subtle tremelo pitch lowering effects, you can set up the trem bottomed out on to the body instead of floating it.
This gives much better tuning stability and when you break a string, the whole guitar won't go wildly out of tune the way a recessed or floating trem will.
Note that recessed or floating non-recessed trems have the string tension of all strings "balancing" the trem, so if one breaks, the tension of the trem springs goes on to the 5 remaining strings, pulling them sharp.
This is not the case with a bottomed out non-recessed, because the trem springs are always pulling the trem flat against the body. If a string breaks, the trem has no further back to be pulled by the spring tension because the trem is already "bottomed out" against the guitar body.

Long story short: you should only get a recessed trem if you want to be able to pull strings sharp with the bar and not be worried about how floating a non-recessed will affect string height/action and tuning stability because recessed/floating trems can be an enormormous pain in the ass to deal with, no point dealing with them at all if you only want to dive bomb or do more subtle, traditional vibrato effects.


Also note that bottoming out a recessed trem requires modification to the guitar, aka a trem block. Fine if you already have a recessed trem, but if you are about to buy a trem guitar, no sense buying a recessed just to block it, might as well by a non-recessed (unless you have your heart set on that guitar for other reasons and are ok dealing with the recessed trem part that you really don't plan on utilizing for pull up aka pitch sharpening.)

Of course a recessed CAN allow for lower action than a non-recessed so that's another benefit even if you plan on "blocking" it's ability to pull notes sharp.
This is usually not a concern though on a non-recessed that came stock on a well built and designed guitar.


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## Macro

BRP pretty much convered everything you will need to know to make your decision.
For me, if I am going with a Floyd, I like it recessed, as its normally on a guitar that I'm going to want a low action on...and I do like to have the option of pulling back on the bar to take harmonics up into the atmosphere 

That all said, I block out the trems on my strats and adjust the springs (all 5 of them) tight enough so that it wont budget without really pushing on the bar (which is always in my guitar case) Other than my shredder 'super strats', I like a fixed bridge, or a Fender style that is blocked and rendered pretty much useless. I just find that tremolos destabilize tuning and kill sustain. 

Still, I love a recessed Floyd on an 80's rocker guitar


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## jwebb1970

I recall EVH claiming that having the Floyd sit flush with the body provided more "tone" in his opinion. Makes a certain level of sense, as the tailpiece in contact with the body wood should conceivably lead to more resonance.

For me, though, having a non floating/non recenssed Floyd just meant that should I pop a string, I can get thru the rest of the song without the rest of the guitar going wildly sharp. I set up non-locking & locking trems in this manner. Just enough spring tension to allow smooth "floaty" movement, but just enough in contact with the body to keep things in tune should a string pop (or if going to drop D).

For Floyds, I used to set things up to where the low E fine tuner could be cranked down to get to D - since the EVH D-Tuna, no need to do that anymore.


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## poeman33

jwebb1970 said:


> I recall EVH claiming that having the Floyd sit flush with the body provided more "tone" in his opinion. Makes a certain level of sense, as the tailpiece in contact with the body wood should conceivably lead to more resonance.
> 
> For me, though, having a non floating/non recenssed Floyd just meant that should I pop a string, I can get thru the rest of the song without the rest of the guitar going wildly sharp. I set up non-locking & locking trems in this manner. Just enough spring tension to allow smooth "floaty" movement, but just enough in contact with the body to keep things in tune should a string pop (or if going to drop D).
> 
> For Floyds, I used to set things up to where the low E fine tuner could be cranked down to get to D - since the EVH D-Tuna, no need to do that anymore.



So what the hell did the coin do for his tone? Was that the secret 

I had an original Kramer with an original Floyd and it was setup floating on top of the body. Never had any issues with action, and that guitar had great sustain. On my first Partscaster, I also had an original Floyd, and it was also non-recessed on top of the body. It sounded like crap floating though...but sounded real nice with 5 springs and flat on the body. So I think, to a degree...it depends on the guitar.


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## LEOVAN83

I always thought that the only difference between one and the other was that with the non-recessed version you can only pull the trem bar a little bit, meaning, those "Dime" squeals would be shorter than on a recessed version, but, you could still do the dive bombs. Also, I understood that in both cases, they are both floating trems, except one was set on top of the guitar raising the angle and giving you more of a Les Paul feel. Maybe I was completeley wrong? I've owned many guitars with the recessed FR, but I was always curious about the other ones as I kept seeing them on 80's hard rock/glam guitars. Was the recessed FR an "upgrade"?

Here are some pics of some guitars I really like... so far, all BC Rich Gunslingers:










Any info on the Gunslingers? Are they considered super fast, good build quality (handmade versions) metal guitars? I mean, I remember my Jackson KV-2 and that had an awesome "shredding" neck, as well as my custom made Bernie Rico Jr's. What about the Gunslingers?? Any ideas?


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## jwebb1970

poeman33 said:


> So what the hell did the coin do for his tone? Was that the secret
> 
> I had an original Kramer with an original Floyd and it was setup floating on top of the body. Never had any issues with action, and that guitar had great sustain. On my first Partscaster, I also had an original Floyd, and it was also non-recessed on top of the body. It sounded like crap floating though...but sounded real nice with 5 springs and flat on the body. So I think, to a degree...it depends on the guitar.


 
The quarter was the tone secret!! That and those truck reflectors. And they had to be the right year of coin & vintage-correct reflectors...just ask the Fender Custom Shop.



Seriously, I think the quarter may have been an EVH modification to perhaps stabilize a previous trem system - hell, probably due to his getting overzealous with a router? IIRC, his main Frankenstein went thru a few trem options, incl the 1st non-fine tuner Floyds.


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## jwebb1970

Digging that green BC Rich, LEOVAN83.


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## brp

Me too!
I'm actually building a partscaster right now that will be this tint of green with maple fretboard and black hardware, inspired by the Jackson "slime green" models.
Pretty much like this BC Rich except with the Strat pickguard setup and Strat headstock.


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