Gen 3 Tremolo

[Skeeter]

Hi all, I have yet to check out a PRS with the Gen 3 tremolo and that along with the development of a few other things in the whammy bar world has me curious about the state of the art these days.

First, I've recently seen new bridges characterized as "vintage locking" (Charvel's new Guthrie Govan, TAG). And they lock the string at the bridge just like a FR, but there are no fine tuners and the size is more in line with smaller classic bridges. Most importantly, the strings are no longer being locked at the nut. With the improvement in nut, bridge design and materials along with locking tuners - I always wondered if this idea would work.

I recently learned this was actually one of FR's earliest designs. As a child of the late 80s/90s, I had no idea - bridges like Ibby's Edge Trems ruled the day - until all of the sudden it was embarrassing to even have a whammy bar, but I digress...

So is the concept - lock at the bridge and the tuners the main difference in PRS's Gen 3 tremolo? Besides better tuning, does this system (including those mentioned above) allow you to get closer to the more extreme FR abilities or is the locking nut crucial in how it slackens the strings so quickly and severely to get those FR-only type sounds?

 

[juka]

The Customer Support Center on PRS's homepage is always a great place to find info like this:

"PRS Gen III Patented Tremolo. Offered in Core production via the "58/15" limited run in 2015.
PRS Gen III Patented Tremolo with locking saddles. Offered through the Private Stock program beginning in 2011."

So basically there are two versions and the version you are talking about is Private Stock only.

 

[Maertl513]

@juka is right, that there´re two different versions of Gen II vibrato around. To use a vintage vibrato likewise a FR bear in mind, that an uprouting option would be very usefull.
The most benefit of a vibrato system like Gen II (or Gen II w/o locking saddles) is the very quick string exchange w/o time consuming use of tools...

 

[C&M Music - Lafayette]

The Gen III tremelo is standard on Core models this year, the CU22, CU24, 408, 509, and Pauls Guitar.