Cokemachine

I've had a Trans Trem on a custom Dingwall guitar for over ten years now & I can say that it does have some unique features that no other trem on the market sports. Besides the transposing feature, you can lock the trem so that it functions as a hard tail. It also sports the 40:1 tuners which are unmatched for tuning precision. The trem itself also has very smooth feel. Rather than go with a headless guitar, I went with just a lock nut on the neck & no tuners on the headstock. For what it is, the Trans Trem is pretty neat piece of hardware. The Trans Trem is not without its weakness though. It doesn't quite have the range of say a Floyd. You can't completely slack the strings with a dive bomb. Also, you're also limited in the string gauge that you can use, so if you use a heavier set than say 9-42, you're going to run into problems with transposing feature. The transposing feature is also not perfect, as it's not going to transpose perfectly both up and down. You can get close, but I usually set up my Trans Trem to be optimized for transposing up. For the best transposing results, the stiffer your neck, the better. The neck on my guitar is the size of a baseball bat & has 2 carbon reinforcement strips. There is very little play in the neck when using the trem. There are some inherent design flaws in the Trans Trem. The use of roller bearings is, from an engineering standpoint, completely wrong for the application. Bearings are meant to be used in situations where you have continuous circular motion. The constant back & forth motion of the trem drastically reduces the wear life of the bearings. Also, the roller saddles themselves are prone to wear due to wear for the same reasons. The quality of the Trans Trem is also pretty pathetic. They are cast from cheap pot metal & are particularly susceptible to brittle failure. I've gone through 2 Trans Trems over the past 10 years & both of them broke at the same place. I had to toss both trems since replacement parts are non-existent. You don't fix Trans Trems, you just buy a new one & at $700 a pop, it can get pricey. A word of caution - MusicYo has no plans to sell or support the Type II Trans Trems beyond their current stock. MusicYo received 300 Trans Trems back in February & when they are gone, they are gone. Ned Steinberger has been working on the Type III Trans Trem for about a year now, but who knows when it will hit the market. If I were you, I'd pass on the current Type II Trans Trems from MusicYo - they are pricey, bound to break & are impossible to fix. Check out the Skyway trem from Skyway Music. I'm currently waiting on one to replace my Trans Trem.

This is one sweet Dingwall bass. http://www.geocities.com/airforcegeoff/Din...l?1041528457460