2 point floating tremolo bridge / tuning problems

This is a long post, and im truly sorry for that, but here goes.

Where i live, it seems to be difficult to get an appointment with a good luthier.

I recently bought a Hohner 57st pro (left handed) strat style. (The first one with a bridge like this).
Brought it to a luthier for a setup, the nut needed to be replaced so that’s what happened.
There was one little problem that i solved myself and that was a sllght humming sound when i strummed the sixth and fifth string.
It seemed that the tremolo was touching the body (inside the guitar) and that was responsible for the unwanted humming. Loosened the screws (all three of them), brought the “body” of the tremolo halfway of the cavity and went on playing.

Now recently i took it to my (evening) school and my guitar teacher pointed out that the bridge was not as it should be. The bridge was floating somewhere between 0 and 1cm above the body.
I said that that was how the luthier gave it back, so i thought it was ok.
He had his doubts, but said nothing else about it. But that stayed with me, because he knows a lot more than i do…

Now yesterday, i may have made the mistake of looking at pictures of tremolo’s (2-point, 6-point tremolo’s, no floyd roses) and how they sit on strats. And they sit really close to the body.
So out comes the screwdriver, down goes the bridge and now it sits a few mm’s above the body (on the screws side), as it won’t go any lower. On the back side, there’s a gap somewhere between 0 and 0,5 mm, i guess between the body and the bridge.

This had an interesting side effect. Strings G and D started buzzing. The others were ok. (except for tuning and intonation).
So out comes the allen key and i go about raising the saddles of these strings, to rid me of this buzzing.
Now, after tuning and intonating all the strings, i find myself doing nothing else but just that.
I spent an hour today, just tuning the strings.
I start at the high e, up to the low e, and check the high e again. It’s out of tune! A few cents, but it is.
So i tune them again. I play a short while and out of pitch they go…
It seems that tuning the high or low e to pitch, seems to influence the other strings.

What’s going on? I’m missing something, or a lot, since i haven’t seen this “behaviour” on my other guitars (which all have fixed bridge tune-o-matics).

The obvious thing to do would be to bring it to a luthier. But there’s a waiting period, since he’s got a lot of work.
I’m not all that happy on going back to the first one, since i have a feeling that he botched the job. I’d like to have a second opinion.

So, untill i can get an appointment, i’d like to see what i can do myself.

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a floating bridge will ‘adjust’ based on any string you change. Tighten the big E and you should plan on needing to also tighten the other strings a little. But, then you’d need to check the big E again. This is because the bridge moved with each string tuned. Bridges have the strings be one part of the tension, but there is a spring (or set of springs) that pull against this string tension. Tuning a string will change the tension of the string side from the bridge’s point of view, so it will move all of the tuning.

Tuning a floating bridge is an iterative process. Nothing sounds funny to me so far.

I should mention that this is for a bridge that can move two ways (sharp and flat). I think there is also a type that moves only one way. This I would expect to be stable over string tuning since it has a fixed surface to pull against.

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This one, and the way it is, can go two ways. Up and down.
This has an effect on the tuning as well?

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I’m sorry to hear about your problems. I remember when I bought my Fender Strat with a tremolo bridge, at first it gave me all sorts of headaches with the tuning not being stable enough. I took it to a luthier and a good setup solved the problems. Fortunately, I’ve never had a problem with strings buzzing and unwanted overtones amplified by the body of the guitar.

On a floating bridge, tuning one string indeed affects the tension of the other strings and the springs of the trem system, not to mention the intonation. Another thing you (or the luthier) should check is whether the radius of the bridge saddles matches that of the fretboard.

Although your guitar is of a different brand, this article might be of some help:

https://fendercustomersupport.microsoftcrmportals.com/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01901

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I’d call it a secondary effect - if the bridge movement is centered, then you change the string gauge, you’d need to then change the spring tension to put the movement centered again.

One thing you might try to see what is happening, is to tighten a string and see what happens to the bridge position. You can do this simply by just doing a string bend or pushing a string into the second one over. Watch your bridge, as you tighten that string being bent, it moves and ALL OTHER strings are now out of tune just a little until you let go of the bent string.

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Thank you all for the useful tips.

I’ll have another go at it and see where that will get me.
I’ll be taking her to a luthier the moment i can, because i have some other questions as well.

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I love this subject but its late I will help you soon as cheers HEC