Ibanez RG450 Trem Arm Fix

Hey Gospel Guitars here and I've come across a reason to make a video today. Um kind of an unusual one. I have not come across this problem before so I thought I'd investigate it and then I decided to make a video on it so it'd help out anybody else out there if this happens too. What I have here is an RG450DX with the Ibanez trem system that's very similar to a Floyd Rose and upon playing one day the bar was looser than it should be. I'm like well this bar doesn't get loose like that what's going on? So a lot of times I'll play without the bar anyway so I pulled it off set it aside went on playing and woke up this morning and got up and I found this on the floor and if I get under the camera you probably recognize this as the piece that your trem bar slips into which is normally sitting right here on your trem system and it's held in on the other side clamped to the metal plate here. So I was like okay I guess the nut fell off on the inside because I've never seen this piece out before I just assumed it was threaded on both sides but it's not. It's got this little plain looking shank here I don't know if you can see it so one end's got the threads which is on top which you see and that's where you insert your bar. So I heard things rattling around inside so I decided that I would flip it over and open it up because I don't know if I could fix it without losing my intonation without you know messing up my Floyd Rose setup which as you know if you use these can be a pain if you don't you have to fuss with them a lot so I figured well let's take the back off and see how far it can go. So I took the back off and I found the parts just sitting right here in this little hole pocket that was designed for your tremolo to be received into and because things are pretty tight quarters here it was still in there. So what I found was this receiver here is open at one end has a hole in the other end and the other end has a hole because you've got this little bolt. This bolt is identical to the type of bolt that you use to hold your lock nuts down. It uses the same size wrench but the screw had gotten loose and fell out and as it got loose this was losing its grip on the metal plate which was keeping the tremolo bar from wiggling all the time so once we got loose enough from playing it without the bar at all I rattled it around enough to where it just fell apart. So I thought I better investigate before I start losing stuff so I pulled that off and I found these two pieces. Now word of warning here as most of you guitar players know that Ona and Ibanez they have these routes cut out so that you can leave the plate on here and access your adjustment screws. I suggest leaving this on especially if you're performing because if this was left off and this happened these parts would be anywhere on that stage or blown off stage or through cracks on stage who knows but you would lose your half your tremolo system would be now gone and you're going to have to find a place to get repaired or to order parts from online or whatever and that's time consuming and frustrating. So my suggestion with these guitars because of this design is whenever you change your strings check this screw. I'm going to put Loctite on it when I reassemble this and I always play with my back on anyway because it does have the slots but that's just a little safety tip I thought I thought of immediately when I found this sitting there I thought wow if I was playing on stage without this cover on I'd be in a world of hurt and I don't have my parts in there. So very easy fix I'm not going to go through all that and make you you know suffer through all that but all I have to do is you know put the part on just show how this fits together you've got the little receptacle that goes inside the guitar so these two pieces just slip right together like that so this part here is the screw will go in like so and you just tighten that puppy down and the shank here will be trapped up against the plate of the Floyd Rose and just insert your bar and you're off and running. So it's not a real complicated assembly at all but I've never seen it and I thought I'd share my experience so that if anybody else wonders why is their tremolo so loose that's why check that little bolt right there and don't lose your parts keep a tray around put the parts in another little tip while I'm here if you notice I have shrink wrap around these three pieces of tools here because these are my Ibanez fingers these fit everything on the Ibanez so I'll instead of searching through all of those hundreds of hex wrenches I just mark them just a little thing you can do you can also buy that little thing that goes on the back of the headstock and holds them for you that Ibanez stopped putting on their guitars but you can still find them so those can be helpful which I need to add to this guitar too so anyway that's it pretty soon this will be just placed back together I don't have to loosen my strings I don't have to go through all the setup again because you can't repair this without loosening your strings and your tailpiece so you can fix this without doing anything thanks for watching I hope that you found it helpful should this ever happen to you please remember this video pass it on to anybody that you know that has an Ibanez RD so we know how to fix this it's a very simple fix so thanks for watching please subscribe if you haven't done so at this point click the bell follow me with any new videos coming out and I will keep introducing new videos as long as I'm breathing because I love working on guitars and helping people to fix theirs so thanks and have a good day hope everything is peaceful with you and your family see you later