Japanese Bigsbyish trem needed a whammy bar

[John]

Customer wanted to know if I could do something about a Whammy bar arm for him,....I told him I'd think about it. A day later I found an offshore strat trem arm and tele knob in a box of parts and a plan emerged.

I drilled out the set screw hole with a 5mm bit and tapped it with an M6 x1  and then tapped the shaft hole with a 1/4 20 tap. Then I straightened out the trem arm and cut off the excess thread,screwed it into the side of the knob, used a short coutersink to screw in from uderneath, put a nylon washer under the knob part and I've got a working offshore bigsbyesque Tremelo. It worked so well I had to share it...I'll probably post it elsewhere, this is a common problem in my shop -old trems with no bar- and it's the simplest solution I've found.

[Mark A. Kane]

Looks like it came from the factory! Idea duly absconded with and filed away for future dazzlement of customers with my (your) ingenuity.

[Mark Pollock]

Nice solution to a perennial problem - I think almost every single one of these kinds of guitars that I see is missing the arm. Somewhere, there is a box FULL of arms and the bolts for them.

[Kerry Krishna]

 It looks 100% stock John! 

[Alexander López]

Beautiful work!