u/UnshapedLime

I love my strandberg Prog NX7, but I've always sort of wished I had just gotten a hardtail instead since I don't use the trem. But hey, there's this thing called a Tremol-No and it should effectively convert this to a hardtail right?

...well I installed one and honestly think I'm going to put the original trem claw back in. It just doesn't really work as well as I thought. Maybe it doesn't work for extended range due to the higher overall tension? But that's only like an extra 15-20lbs for a 7 string. Anyway, it's introduced more problems than it solved:

1. Sooo much sympathetic buzz. The shaft, the set screws, and then sleeve that holds the set screws are all loose parts in full-floating mode. They resonate like a mf. It doesn't show up in the pickups, but it is still loud enough to be distracting at bedroom volumes.
2. In hardtail mode, those three tiny set screws do not fully resist motion along the shaft. For example, I locked down the set screws then tried to tune up from Drop A to B Standard. Over a few minutes of playing, the tuning kept going flat (i.e., Tremol-No was slipping forward). Fine, went back to Drop A. But even when doing aggressive bends, I would still end up flat, presumably because it was slipping forward but then getting stuck and not moving back.

So now I just leave it in floating mode but that buzz is killing me. I've tried playing with the thing to see if maybe I just set it up poorly. I've tried locking down the set screws with varying amounts of torque (in case overtightening was actually working against me). But nothing really gets it to that hardtail experience I want. I suppose I could just straight up glue the damn thing, but overall quite disappointed with it.