How to fix a wobbly whammy bar (Guitar Lesson GG-012) How to play

Hi, how you doing?
Justin here.

In this lesson today, or this video,

it's not really a lesson
I suppose,

I want to talk about wobbly
wang bars on,

or whammy bars, on Stratocasters.

'Cause it's something that's
bugged me for,

I've mostly been a Strat player
and um, in my life,

and the whammy bars get
a bit wobbly.

Even if it, like you
can screw them

all the way in, right,
and then it's kind of stiff.

And it's nice and tight,

and you've got good control
with it,

but then it's kind of stuck there.

And if you keep pushing it down
like that then

the thread wears thin,

and then it doesn't sit here
anymore,

and it's loose.

And I found it really frustrating.

What I wanted was the bar to be
loose like this,

but as soon as I do that

now it's, it's all wobbly.

And I spent a couple of hours

searching around the internet,

and didn't find an answer to
this problem.

And then I Twittered it,
and a bunch of people

all Twittered back the same thing,
which is something.

They all said "Oh just get
some PTFE tape man,"

"don't you know about it?"

And I was like, "well, no actually."

And it seems like quite a few
other people don't know about it,

which is why I'm doing
this video.

So if you go to your local
hardware store,

you'll get this stuff called
PTFE tape.

When I asked for it in my local place

they didn't know what I was talking about,

and then I referred to it as
plumber's tape,

and they right away knew
what I was talking about.

And it's just this white,

I guess it comes in other colors too,

but it's like really thin tape.

Right? And the solution is
really simple.

Let me, I'll go to a little closeup

so you can see exactly what I'm doing.

So here's the end of my whammy bar,

and here's this PTFE tape.

Very, very thin stuff.

So all I'm going to do is just,
kind of,

wrap it around a few times, around
this thing,

and it doesn't even seem to matter

that it's very well done or not.

You know, I've just been kind of

mashing it up at bit.

And I'm, I've got about
that much I reckon.

It's very thin. Easy to break.

And I'm just wrapping that around
the whammy bar here.

The end, the bit with the, with the
thread on it.

So just kind of giving it a bit of a,
a wraps here.

I've tended to do it a little bit
thicker

at this end than down here because

I'm guessing that's where
the wobble happens.

But you'll find now, when I put that
back in,

it's going to be nice and tight.

So literally now you just
put the bar in.

And that's it.

There's no other trick.

Just wrap a bit of tape on it,

and screw the bar in, and
that's it.

I've got, it's really solid now.

It's exactly accurate.

The smallest little movement is
reacting with the bar

but I can push the bar down

so it's out of the way,

bring it back up and it's fine.

So literally from there to there,
it's good.

And I've now got a proper,

proper good grip on my whammy bar.

So, any of you guys that have had
that same problem,

hopefully a little bit of
PTFE tape will fix it.

See you for another lesson or tip
some time real soon.

Bye bye.