Have you set up an Evertune bridge?

[phillybhatesme]

I bought a Jackson Misha Mansoor Juggernaut with an Evertune last year and broke it as soon as it arrived. Let me be clear: I didn't look at the string tension calculator before taking delivery of the guitar, nor when I tried to tune it. For what it's worth, it did NOT arrive in tune, which should have made me stop in my tracks, but I didn't. What I did was take a guitar from drop C and try to put it in drop D with the big beefy strings it came with. I don't actually know what was on there, but I think the low E was at least 56. This amount of tension is not foreign to me, but the standard Evertune module couldn't handle the tension on the A string and I broke the small threaded rod/bolt that turns as you tune the string (pictured later and circled in red). I bought replacement hardware on Black Friday but put the guitar away for months discouraged and annoyed.

In an effort to get it ready to sell to my friend, I finally decided to get the broken module out of there, replace it, and get it set it up for playing. After all, I've had the replacement hardware for 8 months lol.

Step 1: use the fucking string tension calculator. My friend wants the guitar in drop C and isn't too picky about string gauge so I used a set of 11-52s and they all call for the Standard modules on all 6 strings. Good. I bought a standard and a high tension replacement not knowing which one I'd eventually need (and in the last 8 months I may or may not have bought 2-3 more ET-equipped guitars). All 5 other string modules are standard tension.

Step 2: get to work.

Obviously loosen the strings and take em off. Remove the backplate of the guitar and you'll see the back of the ET setup. It's all gotta come out, so remove the metal cover plate and then loosen the four 2.5mm hex bolts that hold the top/front of the bridge down onto the guitar.

All of the hex bolts can stay in place, but be mindful of them if you flip the guitar over. One of the metal plates will stay in place (treble side of the guitar) because a ground wire is attached, but as shown here, the bass side of the guitar has two loose hex bolts going into a little metal plate. These will come out if you flip the guitar over.

Broken module on the left.
Replacement module on the right.

Everything going back into place.

After tuning it:



And a glamor shot:

I turned my first truss rod back in January and fuckin look at me now lol.

Resources:
Servicing an Evertune bridge
Evertune F model bridge removal
Evertune G model bridge removal
Ola's Evertune Playlist

 

[BeZo]

I never set one up, but I learned about the zones in case I ever needed to. It allows me to tune them when I check them out at Guitar Center.

 

[hellzington]

My head hurts just looking at this

 

[phillybhatesme]

My head hurts just looking at this

No shit, I watched the videos several times before attempting this shit. But at the end of the day, tightening and loosening bolts and screws is pretty easy. Putting things back in the way they came out isn't too difficult either. So with that mindset, a job like this becomes easy with a bit of patience. With that being said, i was really proud of myself lol.

I never set one up, but I learned about the zones in case I ever needed to. It allows me to tune them when I check them out at Guitar Center.

I got everything tuned up in zone 2, but when intonating and getting things dialed in for bending, I had to do it several times. I did OK, not great, but ok.

 

[Beam Tetrode]

 

[DrewJD82]

That wasn’t as bad as I was expecting!

I’ve set up my own Evertune and at this point I just wish I never got one, not because the Evertune itself, but it drives me up a wall seeing people discuss them when they clearly haven’t learned how to set them up properly and then you try to explain it to them and it’s one of those situations where you know what they did wrong and how they got to where they did, but their mind is shut and they’re incapable of seeing any other way of using it. I’d imagine there was a lot of this when Floyds and Kahlers first started making their way onto production guitars.

Evertune needs to be clear about exactly how much tension needs to be on those strings for the thing to actually feel like a normal guitar when playing it. All the “it feels funny when bending” is a result of not having it right at the edge of Zone 2, which removes that sluggish activity. It’s fucking crazy to me that people haven’t figured that out yet and simply deem it unusable or unable to do what it claims.

 

[ners]

Feels like overkill unless you're a regularly touring

 

[jco5055]

That wasn’t as bad as I was expecting!

I’ve set up my own Evertune and at this point I just wish I never got one, not because the Evertune itself, but it drives me up a wall seeing people discuss them when they clearly haven’t learned how to set them up properly and then you try to explain it to them and it’s one of those situations where you know what they did wrong and how they got to where they did, but their mind is shut and they’re incapable of seeing any other way of using it. I’d imagine there was a lot of this when Floyds and Kahlers first started making their way onto production guitars.

Evertune needs to be clear about exactly how much tension needs to be on those strings for the thing to actually feel like a normal guitar when playing it. All the “it feels funny when bending” is a result of not having it right at the edge of Zone 2, which removes that sluggish activity. It’s fucking crazy to me that people haven’t figured that out yet and simply deem it unusable or unable to do what it claims.

This frustration you feel is how I 10000% feel about kahlers. Like after getting a kahler guitar and following the official setup guide on YouTube and it working perfectly, I’m legit convinced that everyone and I mean EVERYONE who complains about kahler except for 1) not liking the feel or 2) about it not being double locking/diving as deep just haven’t played a properly setup kahler. And the sad part it’s not even hard to setup, I’d say it’s way easier than a Floyd