Sacrifice the Virgin

I just couldn't resist that post title.

Last month I bought this BC Rich Virgin to remove the Speedloader bridge from and today I finally got round to it.

The Speedloader uses really nice fine pitch thread tremolo studs, much better than the usual sloppy ones on cheap tremolos. So I wanted to remove these too. However my usual method of screwing a long bolt into them and using a block/nut to draw them out wasn't going to work as I simply don't have anything with the same thread.

This means I had to make another puller which can use the actual studs themselves to pull the bushes out. It'll come in useful occasionally when I find something with an odd thread.

Before I pulled the studs, I carefully measured the distance from the nut to the stud centres. This is so I can redrill the studs on the RS10V.

This turned out to be 25-3/16" or 640mm, which seem to be one of those rare measurements where sane imperial and metric measurements are so close as to be equivalent. The distance between the studs is the usual 74mm.

So I've now got an entire Floyd Rose Speedloader, along with the tremolo stop they seem to fit as part of the kit ready to go.

When I'll find time to start work on the RS10V I'm not sure. I do need to decide if I'm going to fit a normal tremolo to the Virgin or if I'm just going to get rid of it as it stands.

BC Rich #4 - 'NJ Speedloader Virgin'

This is the guitar with about the naffest 'stop sniggering at the back' name you could imagine. It even came with a terrible tacky 'have you plucked a Virgin?' ad campaign when launched.

Oh well this one was pretty cheap.

This is very very similar to my Warlock, the upper bout is similarly shaped and the neck is probably identical apart from the truss rod cover.

I have no intention of keeping this. It has been bought to steal the Speedloader tremolo from so I can fit it to my RS10V project.

The seller shipped it with the neck unbolted and when I put it back together it was pretty clear they didn't know how to set the Speedloader up as it was all over the place with some of the fine tuners wound right down. Now set up, I've played it for about half an hour and it's nice enough. These Korean NJs weren't cheap originally despite being bolt-on models and they're much nicer than the modern cheapo models. The body shape actually works well, it's light and pretty compact. Still a stupid name though.

The main feature is the Speedloader which is a piece of nicely finished US engineering. It's the sort of quality that you'd expect from Schaller or Gotoh and a massive step up in sophistication and precision from an original Floyd Rose.

Whether or not it's actually a good idea is debatable though.

Setting them up is super fiddly. Alternative tunings are nigh impossible (you might manage half a step either way, but I'm not going to try) unless somebody makes special string sets. Which they won't. Standard tuning strings are uncommon enough.

Once set up though, string changes are amazingly simple and can be done in seconds. The string starts at tension and you just need to fine tune it.

Tuning stability is great, but you'd kind of expect that.

If I manage to swap the Speedloader onto the RS10V, I think I'll just sell the carcass on. It'd make an ideal project for somebody to drill the headstock for machine heads and fit a standard tremolo.