A tremolo arm, tremolo bar or whammy bar is a lever attached to the bridge and/or the tailpiece of an electric guitar or archtop guitar to enable the player to quickly vary the tension and sometimes the length of the strings temporarily, changing the pitch to create a vibrato, portamento or pitch bend effect.
Instruments without this device are called hard-tail. The term vibrola is also used by some guitar makers to describe their particular trem...
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A tremolo arm, tremolo bar or whammy bar is a lever attached to the bridge and/or the tailpiece of an electric guitar or archtop guitar to enable the player to quickly vary the tension and sometimes the length of the strings temporarily, changing the pitch to create a vibrato, portamento or pitch bend effect.
Instruments without this device are called hard-tail. The term vibrola is also used by some guitar makers to describe their particular tremolo arm designs. The tremolo arm began as a mechanical device for more easily producing the vibrato effects that blues and jazz guitarists had long produced on arch top guitars by manipulating the tailpiece with their picking hand. However, it has also made many sounds possible that could not be produced by the old technique, such as the 1980s-era shred guitar "dive bombing" effect.
Since the regular appearance of mechanical tremolo arms in the 1950s, they have been used by many guitarists, ranging from the gentle inflections of Chet Atkins to...
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