I recently removed my trem cover because i have heard that it enhances the tone. I personally dont hear a difference but many of my guitar heroes have taken off their trem covers and exposed those springs. My question is has there ever been an instance where those springs have actually broken? I'm thinking that a broken spring has the potential to hurt my belly a lot, although i dont know if the physics will allow that to happen.
i remember reading somewhere that if a spring does come off it's a bit of an anti-climactic affair, it does nothing like spring off and hitting you (or the drummer, audience etc) in the eye.
I could be wrong though.
"We all have always shared a common belief that music is meant to be played as loud as possible, really raw and raunchy, and I'll punch out anyone who doesn't like it the way I do." -Bon Scott
yeah, it would take a lot to snap the spring in two with sufficient force to e.g. impale you in the gut, and any sensitive parts are generally protected from impact (um, unless you play like a punk.....). I've never heard of such a thing happening, and I've had the trem cover removed from my strat for years without any problem.
if you're still worried, get some new springs from your local guitar shop (they'll cost pennies or a couple of dollars), and/or icreease the number of springs you use from 3 to 5 if there's sufficient space.
I did once hear about a freak accident where a dude snapped his tremolo arm and somehow managed to implae himself in the arm with that, but it was a bit of a Darwin Awards affair as far as I recall. no life-threatening/guitar-playing-threatening long term damage, and I think he fell over and landed on his guitar or something equally extreme to achieve this.
and I don't noticed much tone difference, but having the cover removed allows me easy access to the springs should I want to use them in my music (see Dommy09s thread on weammy bar use), or just wanna do repairs/whatever.
I've never heard that removing the cover improves tone. I leave mine off because it makes changing strings easier.
It got me a bit curious, though. The plate is going to add some structural stiffness, and right at the spot where the body mass is lightest - could it have an effect on tone?
I won't bore everyone with the details of nodal vibration and Chladni lines. But after looking at the way a solid body guitar reacts to string vibrations, I'd say it the change in tone will be negligible.
Not all solid body guitars have the same design or wood density, so there will be some guitars where the tone will change more than others. But thinking through the physics of sound, those guitars won't sound very good to begin with - if the bridge is very active (in technical terms, an antinode at a specific frequency)... it's going to have lousy sustain. If that's the case, the best fix for tone isn't removing the tremolo cover - it's removing the guitar from your collection and replacing it with something better :)
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