50% OFF on all vintage spacing tremolos B56R56 (2 7/32″ or 56mm E-e ) while supplies last!

All import tremolos SOLD OUT!  Sorry, we are not doing any back orders. Read why…

Boogie Rail has attended many guitar shows in the last year. We have had an amazing response because of supporters like you. We listened to what you had to say about our product and valued your input into our new design. We are bringing in brand a new design, a new look, and different materials to choose from. Check back with us soon or email us to notify you when our new and improved products arrive and see for yourself how Boogie Rail is setting a new standard in sound and control and…. bending all the rules! ….again.

Thank You,

Tony Rukavina

Founder/ Lead Designer

A tremolo brings a whole new dimension to guitar sound and playing however the reliability and feel of a hardtail can’t be beat. I found that I can get the best of both worlds playing with the Boogie Rail. Reversed engineered from the original Stratocaster 6 point tremolo to maintain  the string action and position your used to. The full contact rail design coupled with the fact that the tremolo body sits flat against guitar under normal play gives it a thick sound with great sustain. The break point on a Boogie Rail, or the point where the tremolo starts to lift when a string is being bent is much greater than most other tremolos. This is why it plays solid like a hard-tail until your ready to dive bomb. The 3 slotted holes on the trem body allow you to shift your string block farther over to get more angle on your dive. And without any locking nuts it stays in tune pretty damn good even when de-tuned! One thing that does help is a set of Sperzel locking machine heads and a graphite nut. This very simple design allows you to only dive forward but hey, after all the posts I read on guitar forums of guys asking how to block of their full floating trems, I figure they’re looking for the best of both worlds too!

Boogie Rail performance tremolos attended one of the best guitar shows in the country. Guitarlington 2011 in Arlington, TX.  The reaction to our product was unbelievable! The reviews for the Boogie Rail were awesome. Some people heard of us and some not, but everyone got it. They understood our mission: To combine the reliability and sound of a hard tail with the versatility and all the other fun that goes along with a diving tremolo. Affordable “drop in” tremolo upgrade installed in less than 1hr with no modifications to your guitar. Fits most Fender Stratocasters and many other 6 screw tremolo systems. Take advantage of our holiday sale going on right now. All product are 50% OFF!

10. 1949 Fender Broadcaster prototype: $375,000

Leo Fender’s first solid object prototype became the template for one of the most popular guitars ever made (then known as the Fender Telecaster). Though Les Paul’s quicker off the mark in making the first solid body guitars, this particular model is the key to the fate of the electric guitar world’s most successful companies, and thus history is very important. Sold to private collectors in 1994, for $ 375,000, the highest price ever paid for a guitar at that time.

9. Eric Clapton’s Gold Leaf Stratocaster: $455,550

The original Gold Leaf Stratocaster was ordered by Eric Clapton at the time of the 50th Anniversary of the firm in 1996. “Eric was in the search of something special, a piece that could hang in a museum like the Louvre. John Page, vice president of the Custom Shop immediately thought of a strat in 23k gold, but they needed 3 tests before the good combination between the form and typical varnish of the strat was completed. It was the main guitar used by Eric during 1997 for the tour of Legends, the concert Music for Montserrat in London and for the Korea – Japan tour. The Gold Leaf Stratocaster was later sold by Christies for US $455,000.

8. George and John’s 1964 Gibson SG: $570,000
This guitar is used by The Beatles between 1966 and 1969. George Harrison used it when recording and touring the album Revolver, while John Lennon used it during the sessions for The White Album. It was given by George Peter Ham, from the rock band Badfinger, and after his death lay undiscovered until 2002. It sold to an anonymous bidder at auction in 2004, for a startling $ 570,000.

7. “Lenny” – Stevie Ray Vaughan’s 1965 Fender Composite Stratocaster: $623,500
Great blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan, received from his wife, Lenny, in 1980 as a 26th birthday present, and named it after her. This is one of his favorite guitars and he used it extensively until his death in 1990. The SRV stickers on the body of this guitar is a trademark of the majority of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitars, a habit he picked up from brother Jimmie who started this trend in his presence. In 2004 it became the first and only one guitar ever released for sale by the estate, to raise money for charity.
It raised $ 623,500 at auction to benefit the Crossroads Centre in Antigua.

6. Eric Clapton’s C.F. Martin & Co., circa 1939: $791,500

This Eric Clapton guitar was donated to raise money for Crossroads Rehabilitation Center. It brought in whopping $791,500. Not too bad for an acoustic.

5. Eric Clapton’s 1964 Gibson ES0335 TDC: $847,500
The guitar was used as Clapton’s guitar particularly during 1964, but only rarely after that. It took the highest price ever paid for a Gibson when auctioned.

4. Blackie – Stratocaster hybrid: $959,500
In 1970, due to the effect from other guitarist  Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton decided to switch from Gibson to the Stratocaster guitar. Clapton bought six vintage Strats from the guitar shop in Texas for a hundred dollars each. He gave three to go (for George Harrison, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood) and then collected the best parts of the remaining three which he named Blackie. Clapton played  Blackie  for the first time in January 1973 until 1985. Blackie sold at auction in 2004 for $959,000  and became the one of the world’s most expensive guitar.

3. Bob Marley’s Custom made Washburn 22 series Hawk: estimated Price $1.2 to 2 million
Classified as a national asset by the government of Jamaica, this guitar is one of only seven guitar of reggae icon’s life. On November 21, 1971, after a gig in Vancouver, Marley gave the guitar to a guitar technician Gary Carlsen with the words, “Take it as you will understand later.” Amazing, Carlsen took this as a sign that he should use the gifts he has given to a better world in some way, and so he founded the charity “Different Journeys, One Destination”, offers guitar as a prize in the lottery.

2. Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 Stratocaster: Estimated Price $2 million
This guitar Hendrix played at Woodstock in 1969. Since 1970,  it was in the hands of drummer Mitch Mitchell before re sufacing  in 1990 at the opening of the new Fender Artist Centre.  Complete with cigarette burns on the headstock and trademark Jimi reverse stringing,  it sold at Sotheby’s  for $ 198,000. The rumors say that Paul Allen (Bill Gates’ right-hand man at Microsoft)  paid two million dollars for this guitar in 1998.

1. Reach out to Asia Fender Stratocaster: $2.7 million
This guitar sold at auction in Qatar in 2005  to raise funds for Reach out to Asia, a charity formed to help the tsunami victims. Coordinated by Bryan Adams,  it was signed by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davis, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus & Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard and Bryan Adams himself. Initially taken by the Qatari royal family for $ 1 million,  it was later donated to charity  where it sold again to a price of $ 2.7 million. This guitar has yielded a total of $ 3.7 million dollars for charity.

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For those strat players who  might enjoy an alternative tremolo designed to retro fit your existing 6 point fender bridge in very little time with no mods to your guitar!

Top 12 Female Guitarists

“You can caress [a guitar] like a woman,” says Jimmy Page in the opening of It Might Get Loud, a new documentary by Davis Guggenheim that invites electric-guitar virtuosos Page, U2’s The Edge, and Jack White to meet on an L.A. soundstage, tell their guitar stories, and do a little impromptu jamming. In theaters now, it’s the kind of gripping music doc that could inspire girls and boys everywhere to ditch Guitar Hero for a real Stratocaster. And yet, as good as it is, we couldn’t help but think, Why no female guitarist in the bunch? Could be that since the electric guitar’s popularity blossomed in the mid-twentieth century, collective wisdom has suggested that great female guitarists simply don’t exist. Take Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Only two women, Joni Mitchell and Joan Jett, were honored. In a Washington Post article written in response to Rolling Stone’s list, the writer suggests that as interest in electric guitar was revving up in the ’60s, women weren’t encouraged to step out of their ladylike gender roles, leaving them with an impossible game of catch-up to Jimi Hendrix and Page. Maybe. But Kelley Deal, lead guitarist of the Breeders, doesn’t buy it. “I think we do exist,” she says, “but in a different capacity. Guys really like to hear themselves talk. Women guitarists seem more song-oriented. What they choose to play contributes to making the song better, not just riffing all over it. It’s a deeper relationship.” And it’s a relationship that could helm its own documentary (cough, cough, Mr. Guggenheim). In the meantime, ELLE presents 12 of the greatest female electric guitar players to ever pick up the instrument.

Joan Jett

A no-nonsense player who in only a few strums can get an entire barroom howling her 1982 hit, “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.” That kind of power, often amplified by painted-on leather pants, sets the bar high for Twilight’s Kristen Stewart, who’s playing Jett in an upcoming Runaways biopic.

Lita Ford

After jamming with Jett as lead guitarist in the Runaways, Lita Ford took her pop-metal shedder sound solo and hired fellow rocker chick Sharon Osbourne as her manager. In 1988, she released Lita, a sexy riff-filled album that not only pleased rockers with its head-banging tunes but also got mainstreamers in the pit, especially with “Close My Eyes Forever,” her duet with the prince of darkness Ozzy Osbourne.

Nancy Wilson

Only a few seconds into the riff of Heart’s “Barracuda” and you know that only Nancy Wilson could knock you over with solos that beg to be air-guitared. Which makes us even more excited to hear that Nancy and sister Ann are preparing a new album slated for next summer.

Jennifer Batten

Jennifer Batten’s shredding is just as outrageous as her platinum-spiked locks, both of which must have caught the attention of Michael Jackson, who called on her to play Eddie Van Halen’s “Beat It” guitar solo on his Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory tours. Must-watch video here.

Donita Sparks

Donita Sparks, the woman behind ’80s girl group L7’s guitar-heavy riffs, gave birth to boozy garage grunge (download “Pretend We’re Dead,” or play your own version on Rock Band 2), as well as her own group, Donita Sparks + the Stellar Moments, whose 2008 Transmiticate proves she hasn’t lost her hard-rock edge.

Kelley Deal

Kelley Deal didn’t pick up the guitar until she was 30, but that’s the reason her disheveled playing for the Breeders (and later the Kelley Deal 6000) moves us. It’s untrained, uncalculated, and completely unreal.

Carrie Brownstein

Sleater-Kinney could have fallen into obscurity like some of their ’90s indie-rock classmates (what ever happened to Joan Osborne?) but not with Carrie Brownstein’s riotous wailing, especially Page-like in the group’s 2002 record, One Beat. And lately, she’s taken to blogging for NPR. Photo: Courtesy of Retna

Poison Ivy

The Cramps were playing envelope-pushing ’80s psychobilly before it became mainstream in the ’90s and influenced bands like the Black Lips, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine. With Poison Ivy on the ax (and late husband Lux Interior on vocals), her garage-punk attitude, though totally hard-core, seemed to come from a place of love. Creepy, fetish-filled love.

Ruyter Suys

When her band Nashville Pussy plays live, lead guitarist Ruyter Suys whips her fiery red mane back and forth and lies on the stage floor (sometimes in only her underwear), all while creating the high-pitch electric screams that frame their “good old-fashioned, humping-in-the-back-seat-of-a-car rock ’n’ roll,” as Suys describes it to Rolling Stone. Photo: Courtesy of Retna

The Great Kat

Of all the shredders on our list, Juilliard-trained violinist the Great Kat (aka Katherine Thomas) is the most mind-bogglingly fast. Watch her fingers do the talking in the Beethoven Mush video here. (Or just imagine the composer’s electrical symphony on amphetamines.)

Marnie Stern

Marnie Stern’s twitchy rhythms and face-melting licks take what we love about Eddie Van Halen’s fast-paced playing and paints it with a rock-girl feel. On her second record, This Is It… (2008), Stern is a virtuosic badass.

Orianthi

At 24, Australian newcomer Orianthi’s melodic wailing has already been endorsed by Carlos Santana (“If I was going to pass the baton to someone, she would be my first choice,” he told the Aussie Today show) and Michael Jackson handpicked her for what would have been his comeback tour.

By Julie Vadnal | August 21, 2009

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20% off all Boogie Rail performance tremolos for a limited time only. Diving farther is just the beginning!

Action

Action is most simply understood as the height of the fender bridge saddles in relationship to the fret board. The higher the action the higher the strings will measure off the fretboard. You will commonly hear most players wanting or praising a guitar that has “low action.” Low action guitars are commonly viewed as easy to play, and therefore desirable. It is not surprising that many if not most manufacturers ship their guitars from the factory with an action that is more likely low rather than high. Some players want them even lower and will have them adjusted for this by lowering the saddles with an Allen wrench. The problem with a low action is that you are much more likely to get strings that buzz against the frets. A lot of guitar techs and repair books on this subject will say that it’s not a problem with an electric guitar if you can’t hear it through the amp. And to an extent this is true – if you can’t hear it or it doesn’t bother you then it is not a problem! However, in my experience I can typically hear buzzing through an amp and if you are recording you may not want to hear that in your mix! TIP: Use the correct gauge Allen wrench (it can vary with different Strat models slightly, so I buy the sets you can find at auto parts stores and hardware stores) to raise the offending saddles higher to minimize the buzz. A lot of pro players with good tone play with high action. Yngwie Malmsteen is someone for example who plays with high action and also very fast, so it’s a myth that you can’t play fast with high action. High action is just something you get used to. I personally believe that high action gives better coupled tone because the distance from string to fret is increased, yielding a greater punch or impact when the strings hit the frets, much in the same way (but to a lesser degree) that thicker gauge strings generally have better tone than thinner gauge sets.

Tremolo/Bridge

A full floating tremolo, such as a Floyd Rose, gives you the ability to dive back and forth. A hardtail or fixed fender bridge gives you none. Although your pitch range is wide open with a full floating trem, it comes at a price. Due to the fact that the string and spring tension require a perfect balance for zero pitch return, this gives the guitar a real slinky feel. Unlike a hard tail , when bending a note on 1 string, the other 5 will drop out of tune and that can sound horrible especially when your pulling off a dual bend. Bending on a hard tail is much easier as well. On a floating trem, most of the energy used to bend a string is soaked up in the springs therefore it requires more effort from your fingers to put that note in key. Drop tuning, for example detuning your top string lower from E to D, is not an issue on a hardtail. De-tuning on a floating trem, well that’s a different story. This tends to put every other string out of wack and generally makes the guitar sound a wee bit sharp. How about sound? Well simple physics dictate that more vibrations or resonance will transfer better between 2 objects the more contact they have with one another. Better resonance equals better sound. Better contact equals more sustain. Since the sound on a full floating trem is transferred mainly through the two pivoting studs, a hard tail wins this one hands down. A tremolo brings a whole new dimension to guitar sound and playing however the reliability and feel of a hardtail can’t be beat. I found that I can get the best of both worlds playing this new Fender Bridge tremolo, Boogie Rail. The full contact rail design coupled with the fact that the tremolo body sits flat against guitar under normal play gives it a thick sound with great sustain. The break point on a Boogie Rail, or the point where the tremolo starts to lift when a string is being bent is much greater than most other tremolos. This is why it plays solid like a hard-tail until your ready to dive bomb.

Radius

Radius can be understood most practically as the contour / curve of the bridge saddles so that they match the “radius” of the curvature of the frets on your fretboard. Fender typically has two radii: 7.25″ and 9.5″. Although some newer models like my Custom Shop Design Mexican Built 60s model has a 12″ radius! Typically Vintage spec strats are 7.25″ and American modern models are 9.5″, however if you are not sure, consult the Fender website for your model. The larger the radius, the flatter your strings are in relationship to each other. Shredders typically love flatter radius guitars- that can be anywhere from 10″ – 16″ in radius, such as you would find on many Ibanez models or compound after market necks, which become flatter the further down the neck you go towards the fender bridge. The old 7.25 radius is viewed by many as very comfortable for chording, but not very good for lead work, for the simple reason that the curve of the frets can “choke” out a note as you bend it wildly. So if you have a 7.25 strat . . . TIP: flatten the radius of your fender bridge saddles again by raising the offending bridge saddles on the treble side (typically E and B strings) so that this “choking” out does not occur. A lot of pro players will do this – use Strats with 7.25 radius necks but with bridge saddles that look a lot more like 9.5 or even 12″ !

Relief

Relief is the amount of curvature in the neck, because strings under tension naturally create a pull/bow on the neck. The truss rod inside the neck is set to counteract this action. Most guitars are shipped with straight necks for good reason. Tightening the truss rod will straighten the neck, i.e. reduce forward bow caused by the string tension. Loosening the truss rod will do the exact opposite, creating more relief in the neck – most noticeable as a bow in the neck in the middle frets area. When you loosen the truss rod you are in effect causing the strings to be higher off the fretboard in that portion of the neck that is bowed. Again, because some players don’t like a high action they look unfavorably on having relief in their neck. But the benefit of having some relief in the neck is that because the strings are higher off the frets in the controlled bowed section, the string angle across the fret behind (or in front of depending on your viewpoint) the fretted string there will have slightly higher clearance, thus potentially reducing the amount of buzz you are going to hear on the strings. Tightening a truss rod too much can ruin your guitar, so be careful, however if your guitar came from the factory and you have never adjusted it, loosening it will probably not hurt it and you will not need much of a turn to do the job and see some results, and remember that the neck may continue to adjust for 24 hours somewhat as the strings are stretched back into tension. But you can loosen the rod so much if you keep turning it that it will come apart, and you don’t want that to happen!! Truss rod adjustments are best left to a professional repair man.

Buzzing on Open Strings

If you hit an open E, A or D string (typically its a wound string, but I’ve heard open string buzzing on G strings too) and you get a buzz then what is happening is that the strings are hitting the first fret. The most common explanation for this is a nut that is cut too low, however other things can have a minute impact on the relationship of string clearance (in my opinion, such as the tremolo/fender bridge fulcrum setup, i.e. overall bridge height off the body, irregardless of saddle height). Its entirely possible that you have raised your action, and loosened for some relief and you still have bad buzz not only on the open strings but on other frets on the wound strings as well. The problem is the nut! You can have another nut cut for you, have a luthier back fill it, buy some pre-cut blanks in the hope they are better, or do what I do, shim it! With the strings off the guitar, get a pair of decent needle nose pliers and pull and shimmy and gently rock the nut out of the seating. On some newer Strats I’ve noticed they are not even gluing the nuts anymore! CNC routing must be really tight!* (* I should mention that this technique mainly applies to rosewood board strats- on maple necks the finish is typically sprayed over or around the nut so that pulling out the nut is much more difficult. You can try scoring around the base with a razor blade but if that doesn’t enable your pliers to get a grip on the nut and loosen it, then this is when I would stop and take it to a luthier, for fear of chipping the nut.)

What you want to do is cut a shim that matches as closely as possible the base of the nut seat. It should be out of a thin material. I use, oddly enough, copper shielding tape from Stewart McDonald that I use to shield my component cavities (I leave the paper backing on when I cut it and place it). The good thing about this is that it is easily cut with scissors and can be removed easily later should you decide the shim doesn’t work for you. The bad thing is that the nut might move once you put it back, but typically this is a minor movement and you can push it back into place. Using a one or two ply approach this way, I have been able to cure the open string buzz issue completely. Open string buzz is something you DO hear through an amp because typically we like to hit those power notes hard! If you do proceed with the shim, thus raising the nut, remember that the rest of the string clearance will also be higher, thus effectively raising your action. This might make the guitar very uncomfortable to play . . . because we are used to having some relief but not necessarily higher string clearance across the entire length of the fretboard uniformly, aside from that caused from raising the fender bridge saddles. So if you raised the bridge saddles to create higher action and shimmed the nut and its uncomfortable to play, I recommend lowering the action a hair to see if that helps – this is what I’ve done with my guitars and for me it is the best compromise I’ve found for my Strats. It seems I spend just as much time fiddling with my guitars as I do playing them. Oh well, I guess that’s all part of the fun. Good Luck!

Boogie Rail Performance Tremolos

A unique full contact tremolo designed to easily retro fit your existing 6 point Stratocaster style tremolo in very little time with no modifications to your guitar. The feel and reliability of a hard tail with flexibility and sound of a tremolo. Diving farther is just the  beginning. See for yourself  how  Boogie Rail is bending all the rules!

Check out this cool video!

20% off all Boogie Rail performance tremolos for a limited time only. Diving farther is just the beginning!

We thought some of you would enjoy this chronological time line of one of the worlds most iconic companies, Fender.

We thought some of you would enjoy this chronological time line of one of the worlds most iconic companies, Fender.

We  thought some of you would enjoy this chronological time line of one of the worlds most iconic companies , Fender.

Stay tuned for Pt. 2 and 3 coming soon!