”IT ACCENTUATES WHAT’S ALREADY GOOD ABOUT YOUR GUITAR.” ~ BILL FRISELL
Harmonic overtones are important for the coloration, completeness and presence of tone on offset style guitar hardware. Like on pianos, violins and archtop style guitars, overtones enrich fundamental notes and make the instruments resonate as part of a whole. For example, if you were to remove overtones from a piano it would sound like a keyboard. Overtones on an offset style guitar are a crucial part of why the guitars stand out from all other solid body electric guitars. Our offset vibrato and bridge kits provide rich, piano-like harmonic overtones and will accentuate what’s already good about your guitar.
Our full contact fulcrum plate and string plate on our vibratos are machined for proper downward angle after the saddle to ensure that the correct harmonic overtones between the saddle and vibrato are retained, resulting in a highly resonant instrument.
Full-Contact Fulcrum and String Plate
Our fulcrum plate and string plates are made of thicker stainless steel to ensure constant stability and both are machined to a knife edge after brake forming as brake forming metal can be inconsistent. Each string and fulcrum plate are tested together on each unit, to ensure the knife edge of the fulcrum plate makes full contact with the machined string plate. This results in an effortless, immediate fluttery response with use.
The internal fulcrum plate is secured by three flat head Phillips machine screws so your E strings will not rest against the top of the screws. Unlike vintage and other aftermarket offset trems, our body plate is thicker, not only to accommodate our flat head fulcrum plate screws, but to prevent warping over time, a common occurrence on vintage and thinner top offset vibratos.
String Plate Cutout
The string plate cutout on the body plate is deeper to prevent the ball ends of your strings from touching the back end of the plate when the arm is moved upward. This also increases the upward dynamic range. The string plate cutout is wider to ensure the sides of the string plate don’t rest against the edges of the cutout. When stringing, adjust it centered and it will remain in place under tension.
Valve Spring
Our valve spring is custom made out of high carbon steel and is pre-set to remove stress and lessen any break-in period. High carbon steel is harder than stainless steel and better returns to its original shape despite significant bending. Our spring seat is machined from solid brass.
Turning the center Phillips machine screw on the body plate adjusts the tension of the spring and in doing so, the arm tension. Turn it clockwise to stiffen or counterclockwise to loosen to your preference. This will also lower and raise the arm off the body.
Mastery Arm Housing
Mastery Vibratos feature our patent-pending arm housing that is machined from a single block of solid stainless steel and has an internal stainless steel spring plunger that allows you to adjust the stiffness of the vibrato’s arm rotation to your preference. The arm housing is threaded into our string plate and is secured by a custom made nut from the top, designed and machined by us. The arm itself is vintage-spec brake formed (not curved) with zero free play and has a threaded outer end with parchment tip included. The arm itself is machined from a hard, military-grade stainless steel alloy to prevent bending with use. No internal nylon plastic components are used.
Our arm and arm housing are preset from our factory to ensure zero free play, yet allow the arm to be moved freely and left in place when last used. It is recommended you do not remove the arm, even when cased, as we machine our arm housing to a close tolerance to our arms. It’s fine to remove to lubricate it if needed in the future.
We also machine arm tips out of aluminum, including our own “UFO” design, which are sold separately on our store page.
All of our products are luthier-designed and precision machined of the highest quality, non-corrosive materials in Minneapolis, MN.
* Mastery Vibrato arms and components are unique to the Mastery Vibrato unit and are not sold separately.
*Please refer to our Instagram and Twitter page for release updates.
Mastery Vibrato Products
Mastery Testimonials
“The form and function of Mastery hardware dovetails perfectly with Collings aesthetic and quality standards.”
– Bill Collings, Collings Guitars
“BilT Guitars has been using Mastery products since 2008. Any BilT offset with a vibrato will be Mastery or it won’t be at all.”
– Tim Thelen, BiLT Guitars
“I was never much of a vibrato user until the Mastery Vibrato existed. Now, I install them on most of my guitars and always recommend them over everything else out there.”
– Paul Rhoney, Rhoney Guitars
“The only offset vibrato I use for Novo Guitars is Mastery – it truly is the best option.”
– Dennis Fano, Novo Guitars
Notes
Our luthier designed and multi-patent issued hardware is crafted and assembled in Minneapolis, MN, using the finest materials available. Each individual unit is inspected and tested before being shipped to you, to ensure the best possible performance. Every part of our vibrato is precision machined out of the highest quality, non-corrosive materials to protect against any rust. Because we are currently such a small shop, Mastery hardware is only available through this website and is not available through any other online retailer in the USA. Please look over the specs of the various parts that go into the Mastery Vibrato below.
