Ok, so I’m finally getting around to finishing the story on my ’09 Stratocaster tremolo…so after waiting about two months to get the paper clip sized “spring clip,” I’d order two I think I mentioned that, I promptly realized that I was unable to remove the piece of the spring clip that was in still stuck in the tremolo. Since the space there is only about the width of a hack-saw blade, I was unable to find any kind of tool that would fit in there and extract this 1/2″ piece of metal clip. So I took a hack-saw blade 😉 and gently filed down the 1/16″ of and inch of the clip that was sticking up in the slot.
(Spring Clip Slot in Tail Piece!) Next I drilled a new hole for the spring clip with micro-drill bits that I purchased on-line. This sounds easy and it took about four hours to drill this hole, I had to be oh so careful not to break the drill bit, since it was about the size of a pin! Then I was only able to drill so deep into the body of the tremolo, making it impossible to get the whole spring clip into the hole I’d drilled. So I had to cut it down a little bit in size, thus reducing it’s effectiveness in holding in the tremolo arm! Conclusion, I’m in favor of the New “Spring Clip” style vs. the Old screw in tremolo system, although an old type may not have broken under the stress that the new one did, it would have been just as big a hassle to remove the broken off threaded end of an arm as it was to do this operation. So I would recommend, if you have the money, just buy a new tremolo base plate for around $100.00 vs the $15.00 I spent and save yourself the hassle. Plus as an added bonus, you get to keep your “broken” tremolo plate which you can use for a “hard-tail” in the future 😉 !
