What kind of tremolo unit for strat body?

[Asher]

Hi all, I got a Starcaster by Fender from a friend. It's one of those cheapies with the pointed arrow headstock.

The whammy arm was broken off in the unit, and I want to replace the whole unit with something from guitarfetish (http://www.guitarfetish.com/Tremolos_c_203.html). I was thinking of putting a vintage USA spaced tremolo unit in the body. Would this work? I noticed that GFS also had some bridge tremolo units for imported guitars too.

[timhulio]

No, just add the import trem that GFS do, otherwise the screw holes won't line-up.

[Asher]

Cool! Thanks for the reply

On another note.. does anybody know why the imports have different string spacing than the USA models? Is it just different factories with different specs?

[Dave]

Cool! Thanks for the reply

On another note.. does anybody know why the imports have different string spacing than the USA models? Is it just different factories with different specs?

Usually its because US guitars and hardware are manufactured to Imperial measurement (Inches) and Import (i.e Asian) are built to Metric measurements (centimetres/milimetres) leading to slight differences.

As an example if you owned a Jag HH from Japan like I used to and you wanted to stick a Tonepros TOM in there you'd have to order a Metric version for it to fit. I expect there are exceptions to this.

[porterhaus]

Also, US spec necks are slightly wider than the import spec necks. The wider US spec string spacing (on US spec bridges) works well with the wider US necks. And, of course, the narrower string spacing on the import spec bridges work better with the narrower import necks.