Even high quality guitars frequently have small, low quality sustain blocks fitted to their Floyd Rose systems. A brass sustain block upgrade is easily the most common upgrade made for Floyd Rose guitars. The reasons for this include cost, as brass is 1/4th of the price of a titanium or tungsten upgrade, as well as the increased sustain and fatness offered by a big brass block upgrade.
So I decided to put a 37mm L-shaped brass block (market price $39.99) into my ESP LTD KH-602 (retail $1,284). My particular block was a Floyd Rose official, although there’s a number of manufacturers on the market. For a bit of background, the KH-602 is a Kirk Hammett signature loaded with an EMG-81 bridge pick-up and an EMG-60 in the neck. It has a Floyd Rose 1000 Series tremolo bridge, which is the Korean-made Floyd, made with the same materials as the German made Originals. The guitar body is alder, the neck maple and the fingerboard rosewood. Presumably different wood types will respond differently to different block types.
I’ll break this article into two sections: the review and the installation guide. Let’s start with the review.
37mm Floyd Rose brass sustain block review
A comparison between the stock block (left) and the brass sustain block (right).
My intention with the brass sustain block upgrade was to thicken up the somewhat thin sound of the KH-602 for my band’s EP rhythm guitar recordings. The songs are in D standard and drop C tuning, and feature a lot of high gain parts. I found the brass block performed fairly well on a guitar in D standard but it didn’t improve the results I got while playing in drop C.
The stock installation on my guitar was a 32mm (height) x 8mm (depth) Floyd Rose branded block, which is made out of nickel-plated brass. The stock guitar sound was a little shrill and I wanted to warm it up. The new block was 37mm (height) x 13mm (depth), so there was a lot more mass and weight added. My guitar was noticeably heavier afterwards.
Brass block delivers on warmth, but fails at drop tunings
How did it change the sound? Well, it worked well for certain styles of playing, and less for others. As expected, the big brass block made the guitar a lot warmer and fuller sounding. Unfortunately under high gain, and particularly while downtuned, the brass also made the guitar tone muddy and indistinct. Single note rhythm playing sounded fine, but as soon as I started using three-finger powerchords in drop C, the note separation was lost.
Earlier scratch takes I’d done with the same guitar in drop C without the brass sustain block were noticeably clearer and sounded a lot better. I never particularly liked the tone of my guitar but after hearing it with brass, I found a new appreciation for the stock set-up. Having the greater clarity and note separation of the original block made a world of difference in the studio.
While playing in drop D with the brass block, [...]
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