Blog - Whammy Bar Trick!

This months blog will focus on a whammy bar trick, highly appropriate as I have recently purchased a super strat! It's a great 80's trick courteous of Eddie Van Halen amongst others.

All you will need is a guitar that has a tremolo system / whammy bar. Certain guitars have licensed Floyd Rose tremolo systems, these kind of tremolo units tend to work better for whammy bar abuse simply as they stay in tune due to a locking nut. However there are other great additions out there too, well worth researching if serious dive bombing is your thing!

Technique

The technique involves pulling off to an open string while depressing the bar to catch the guitars' natural harmonics, then raising the bar to produce a screaming sound.

Lick

Place your 1st finger on the G-string at the 5th fret and pull off to an open string, then depress the bar. While the strings are 'flabby' pull off from the 2nd fret to an open G-string then gently lay the pad of your 3rd finger across the 4th or 5th fret of the G-string to produce the natural harmonic. Once the harmonic is sounded raise the bar to your heart's delight and listen to your guitar scream!

Experiment pulling off from different frets on other strings too, the guitars natural harmonics are most prominent at the 3, 4, 5 7,and 12th frets. You can now begin to incorporate a whammy bar trick into your sweep picking licks...that's when things get crazy!!

Have some fun!