The physics of unwound and wound strings on the electric guitar applied to the pitch intervals produced by tremolo/vibrato arm systems
Fig 1
Cross-section of an electric guitar showing the operation of a tremolo system (not to scale).
The vibrating length (l0 + Δl) of the tuned up string is shown as a thick grey line. When the tremolo arm is raised (away from the body), the bridge plate, saddle and tremolo block are all rotated by an angle of θ around the pivot. The resulting sounding length, shown as a thick black line, is increased by a distance δ.