To "Wham" or not to "Wham"

Hello Chrisbulog! Have you heard Jeff Beck track Nadia. (on cd: You Had It Coming) Originally it's Nitin Sawhney song. If not, listen it. He plays only beginning of the song with slide. And then.. His playing is unbelevable! Greetings from Finland!

Without a floyd-rose you're going to have a very hard time doing the whammy stuff. There are however a few things you can try. Digitech (and I'm sure others) have a whammy pedal as a solo effect pedal and it is also builit into many of their other effects units. With it you can simulate some of the stuff satch and vai are doing using the pedal. You will still have a very hard time making it match up exact. The whammy-bar is a huge part of my playing style as well. I don't even look at guitars (electric that is) that don't have floyd-rose's. They help to give the guitar a "vocal" qaulity, that is to say it helps simulate a human voice. (among other things) Honestly if I were you I would start looking at a second guitar. You can get an ibanez (which both satch and vai use) with a floyd-rose on it for around $300-350 new. Even less if you pick one up used. Floyd-Rose's have a couple drawbacks: 1: Changing strings takes longer since you end up tuning it multiple time to get them stretched out before locking them down. 2: It's hard to do alternate tunings and almost impossible on the fly. You have to start looking at having guitars set up to different tunings which is what I do. That being said there are also some advanteges which I think out-weighs the faults: 1: Once it's tuned, it's in tune. You can play like mad and go nuts on the whammy bar and it seldom goes out of tune. It's great for long gigs. 2: Whammy bar baby. Hope that helps, just pick up a second guitar...it never hurts to have a backup anyways...