small question

[JacksonEliteFan]

Its really cool to see, how much interest u guys have in solving such a (small) problem . I own 4 jackson guitars, 2 are recently bought. My SL3 was bought in 2005 and i never had problems with the neck (in face of excessive using the trem). I really did not care about the guitar, I just played (like crazy), but the only part with symptoms of fatigue was the trem. The neck really did not bend much, just a "breath". Maybe i have to rethink my tremolo technique to get the maximum of it. Current a RR24 has to hang on. I will look out for some changes. To get back to the question (excuse me for my bad english, i hope its possibly to brush it up a little while using this forum ) on my new Elite Soloist i recognized a detuning while using the trem. The g-string note shows an upward movement while all other strings are tuned down. I think this shows perfectly how much one has to stretch the string before locking it, even on a 9-42 setup. By the way: cool forum!

[jackhamer]

Yep, even on my non trem guitars, i'll stretch the heck out of them. I stretch, tune, stretch tune, stretch, tune, and keep doing that until they don't go out of tune from stretching. Then lock if it's a locking nut. Another thing i do with locking trems is to lock it and find out if any of the strings went sharp or flat from locking. Sometimes a particular string will always go sharp. So instead of adjusting with the fine tuners, i'll detune the string just a bit before locking it. That way the locking will make it go sharp and it will be much closer and you won't have to fine tune it as much. I had an old Charvel model 2 that had that problem with the B string and it used to drive me nuts.

[CowboyFromHell]

What method are you using to stretch the strings on a non-trem guitar?

[jackhamer]

I just lay the guitar in my lap, pinch the string with both hands with a few inches between my hands and push and pull the string back and forth between them a few times. Not so hard that you break the string. Some people pull them up and away from the fret board, i like to do it sideways across the fret board, feels like i have more control that way. Obviously you want to be gentle with the unwound strings.

[jackhamer]

That got me thinking, there has to be a vid of this on youtube. So here's a slightly different version of what i do. I like the part where he added in stretching behind the nut and behind a bridge if you have a stopbar tail type setup on a non trem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUvDdYYs0Zc