Recessed vs Non Recessed Floyd Rose

Ratae Corieltauvorum

Ratae Corieltauvorum

HCEG Exile
I've been asked to build a "Super Strat" using an ash Strat body I have at home, but I don't know the pros and cons of recessing and non recessed versions?

Anybody care to give me a heads up?

I'm sure I could Google it, but post count ya know:wink:
 
Floyds sit a little high on the body when not recessed. The neck will probably need a shim at the front to tilt the neck back to get the strings down. Recessing it gets it closer to standard strat saddle height.
 
Essentially, recessed if you want to float the bridge a la Steve Vai/Joe Satriani, non-recessed if you want it to only lower pitch a la Eddie Van Halen. The bridge itself is the same, just whether you route out the wood behind/beneath it or not.

As Tele said, you can float a non-recessed Floyd (I believe that George Lynch likes his personal guitars set up this way), it'll just sit higher up on the body and need a greater degree of neck angle. It also limits how high you can raise the pitch.
 
What both of those guys said.

I've got a bunch of non-recessed and a couple of recessed. I have one of my recessed blocked to do dives only anyway. The other is a Fernandes with a sustainer, so I leave it fully floating to get the weird sound effects. :grin:
 
There are, as far as i'm aware, no benefits to a non-recessed floyd over one that is recessed, unless you are of the opinion that the 1.41% of body wood removed will negatively affect the tone.
 
^If they're both floating? Yeah, no point in a floating non-recessed Floyd. If the non-recessed is flush-mounted, there's the whole "won't go out of tune on a string break" aspect and being able to use a D-Tuna.
 
bubkusjones said:
^If they're both floating? Yeah, no point in a floating non-recessed Floyd. If the non-recessed is flush-mounted, there's the whole "won't go out of tune on a string break" aspect and being able to use a D-Tuna.
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Good points. I never use drop d so that's a moot point for me, but might matter to others. As far as string breakage, breaking a string is going to put everything else slightly out of wack anyway unless you have that floyd tightened down good, then you have the hex screws biting into the body anyway.

Best to recess for versatility's sake. You can't pull up or flutter with it set for only dives, and as mentioned, it's quite a bit up more on the body.
 
Grave Bomber said:
Good points. I never use drop d so that's a moot point for me, but might matter to others. As far as string breakage, breaking a string is going to put everything else slightly out of wack anyway unless you have that floyd tightened down good, then you have the hex screws biting into the body anyway.
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Never done that for me. If it's against the body, there shouldn't be anywhere for it to go if a string breaks, just like the old-school 6-screw vibratos.


I love the versatility of a recessed Floyd, but I'm always paranoid about breaking a string so I rarely ever pull up anyways.
 
bubkusjones said:
Never done that for me. If it's against the body, there shouldn't be anywhere for it to go if a string breaks, just like the old-school 6-screw vibratos.
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Oh, you're right, the base plate is going to be below the hex's anyway! Bad memory.
 
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Maybe so, but you can slacken the strings past the point of vibration with either. :)

Sent from my HUAWEI U8681 using Tapatalk 2
 
I can bend up with my fingers... So non-recessed for me.

Actually, I prefer non-recessed in regards to bending. I do a lot of double-stop bends (like bending a D on the B string up while simultaneously playing an E on the E string without bending) and a floating Floyd messes with that.
 
I much prefer the non recessed as it responds to bends , double stops, and broken strings like a hard tail... but you can still do dive bombs. Ironically I like my prs terms floating and they can't dive the same way.
 
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