More than 30 years after its introduction, the Floyd Rose vibrato tailpiece is still a divisive little chunk of metal. Some players love it for its expressive qualities and for the tuning stability it provides. Others hate it because they feel it promotes mindless horsie noises and is difficult to set up and maintain. Both sides have a point! In the right hands, a Floyd can add a beautiful, lyrical or otherwise eerie quality to your music. In the wrong hands it can sound like a hideous shrieking disaster. And if you’re used to fixed bridges, a Floyd can be a massive pain to set up (at least at first. You pick up a lot of tricks along the way which make life a lot easier).
With that said, if you’re not a fan of the Floyd, you might want to look away. Because this post is about how to make a whole bunch of freaky alien horse noises with your Floyd Rose. Here are some of my favourite bizarre whammy tricks, recorded using my Buddy Blaze Sevenator prototype seven-string with Full Shred and ’59 humbuckers in a one-piece premium Poplar body. I’ve annotated where each trick happens.

The Flutter
This technique was popularised by dudes like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Brad Gillis. Nuno Bettencourt has been known to kick in a great flutter or two as well. The idea is simple” whack the whammy bar so hard that it wiggles the bridge up and down until it settles back into its resting state. Think of it as an ultra-extreme form of vibrato if you must, like a vocalist trying to sing random notes while sitting on top of a washing machine. To achieve the best flutter I find it helps to point the whammy bar towards the rear strap button and to make sure that it’s secured nice and tightly in the socket. That way you’re introducing the maximum amount of kinetic energy into the bridge and springs, instead of letting that energy just sort of fizzle out by allowing the bar to just rattle around in the socket.

The Hiccup
Like the flutter, this is another technique that works best when the bar is secured tightly and is pointing towards the rear strap pin. Simply whack the bar with the edge of your palm at the very beginning of the note. The pitch will jump up rapidly before the bridge settles back into its neutral position. You can also pull this one off by just pushing the edge of your picking hand against the bridge itself instead of using the bar, but you risk knocking the fine tuners if you do that.

The Lizard Down The Throat
Joe Satriani popularised this effect. Play a random note somewhere low-ish on the G string, then slide the note up the neck at roughly the same rate that you press down on the whammy bar. With a little practice you’ll more or less be able to maintain a constant pitch as you slide up and whammy down, but with all sorts of interesting little grace notes caused by the frets and any little lags in syncing up what each hand is doing. I guess it gets its name because it sounds like there’s a lizard trying to crawl out of your throat or something. Urgh. Sounds cool though. The effect, I mean, not the lizard.

Urgh.
The Warbly Cassette
Those of us old enough to remember cassette players will also remember the unique seasick sound that you got when you left a cassette on the dashboard of your car on a hot day. The tape inside the cassette would be subjected to the powerful forces of mighty Ra, the Egypitan sun god, and the music contained therein would be warped into a tremolo-like warbly wobble. This sounds pretty damn terrible when applied across an entire song, but if you could harness it as a guitar effect just for a phrase or two it’d be pretty cool, right? Well you can do just that by modifying the ‘edge of the picking hand’ technique for the Hiccup. Play a steady arpeggio pattern while resting the edge of your hand on the back of the bridge, and picking just in front of the bridge. Add a little bit of a ‘bounce’ to your picking action and you’ll be able to simulate a wobbly, melted audio cassette. This can work great as an ear-catching little effect, like the ultimate in analog vibrato. Record one track performed this way and another performed normally for a very cool, swimming chorus-like effect.

The Dimebag Darrell Squeal
It’s the ultimate in harmonic trickery: dump the whammy bar all the way down so the strings flop loose off the fretboard. Use your fretting hand middle finger to drag the G string towards the floor hard enough to sound it as you begin to bring the bar up, then immediately place the edge of your ring finger lightly over a harmonic node point. Keep bringing the bar back up to its neutral point or keep pulling up so the harmonic squeals up into the stratosphere.
What about you? What are your favourite Floyd Rose tricks?