I’m considering a second guitar and thinking of going for a hardtail. I have a squire with a tremolo currently, but never use it because it goes out of tune, and honestly in a few years of playing haven’t come across anything I’ve tried to play that requires it. I haven’t seen one used in a single tutorial video.
If you aren’t playing Van Halen, do they ever really get much use?
I would buy a decent Floyd Rose, but don’t know if the tuning would be a hassle. Or if I went hardtail would I regret it later?
Other than some rock, where are these really used?
I’m late to the party, but my views on the subject tend to differ from most people so I’ll offer them.
The way I see it, a tremolo system can easily become a hardtail, but a hardtail can not easily become a tremolo system. You can install something like a Dusenberg system or a Bigsby on a guitar with a stop bar, but then you’re just getting that little bit of warble instead of the range of a good floating tremolo system.
You own a guitar with a trem, but if it’s just the 6-screw Squier trem, it’s more like a knock your guitar out of tune device than a functional tremolo system. Certainly you can do a lot to help it, but it’s really never going to perform as well as a proper 2-point floating trem.
I used to largely be a hardtail guy, but always ran into the problem that, when I do want a trem on occasion, my dedicated tremolo-equipped guitar hasn’t been maintained in a while, the trem may not be performing as well as it should, the strings may be old and corroded, the setup may be out of whack, so then I just wouldn’t use it when I wanted to because I didn’t want to go through the process of a setup just for that. That, and that trem guitar always had different pickups, so I’m tweaking stuff to try to get the sound similar to what I’m used to.
Nowadays I don’t own any hardtails. Everything has a 2-point floating trem. My main guitar is equipped with a Gotoh 510 and a Tremol-no, it can transition from a hardtail to a fully floating trem in a moment. Don’t have to worry about difficulties with alternate tunings and double stops. Don’t have to worry about a string snapping and throwing the entire system out of tune. Because it stays blocked about 90% of the time, but when I do have a need for a trem, it’s right there. I can turn two thumbscrews on the Tremol-no, and it’s back to floating. The trem is always in perfect working order, I don’t have to worry about the setup being off or inconsistencies in tone, and I don’t even have to swap guitars. Rock solid trem system when I want it, rock solid hardtail when I don’t.
Certainly get whatever you feel is right for you, but I’d encourage anybody to explore a similar setup if they are undecided or only need a trem a small portion of the time. Or even if they don’t think they’ll ever need a trem tbh, because people change their minds constantly.