Ok, your all tuned up, the cam is level and your arm is set at the right height. The strings have stretched and your ready to set up this Drop tune gizmo. But first an educational primer...

"String pull above, offset by spring pull below, is equalized over a pivot point thus keeping everything equally floating. If you subtract any of these two forces like break a string, an equalizing reaction take place where all the forces will seek out and find their equal balance point again."

What just happened here? Answer: You broke a string and everything went out of tune. But guess what? The same thing happens when you drop tune too. Your not really breaking the string in this case, your just loosening it. Kinda breaking it halfway. So the springs underneath which aren't broken and still have the same pull as before, will overpower the pull of the six strings above (now really five and a half), and thus the arm will go up in the air and the cam will rotate backwards until everything re-equalizes again.....but out of tune.

If only the cam was prevented from rotating backwards during drop tuning or when I break a string, it would stay tuned. That's where the Drop stop comes in. It acts like a stilt under the back of the cam preventing rollback.

So to set this up properly you want the guitar tuned to standard pitch. Next take the load lever adjustment in the middle of the cam and screw it downward in effect rolling the cam back abit. Do this while watching the tuner needle. When you do this the cam rolls back and makes all the string sharp equally. Your actually making the springs below stronger through leverage. So the idea here is to have all the strings equally sharp a few cents. then you take the D stop and screw it down until it just bottoms out. At this point your still those few cents sharp as before. Now relieve most but not all the pressure on the D-stop by barely pushing down on the arm slightly or your strip the hex out, at the same time screw the D stop down abit further until you get to the point where the cam was oriented before and all cents are back at zero. At this point you cannot pull back any and when you dive and return it will stop where it is tuned at. Now when you drop any tunings on any strings you wont go out of tune anymore.

Once this is completely installed, setup and working, you have 3 choices of operation when playing:

1) Full tremolo mode: When the D-Stop is retracted all the way up, you are in full tremolo mode. The Drop D lock is up and out of the way so you have full "to the hilt, up a fifth" pullups or bottom scraping dives.

2) Half tremolo (dive) only mode: When thew Drop stop is extended all the way down and bottomed out, your in Drop tuning mode. You can drop any strings as far as you want and it won't go out of tune. Remember even with out a Drop stop, you can still drop tune. Its just a pain to switch back and forth with one guitar. Using the drop stop gives you the freedom to go any way you want on one guitar without any modifications.

3) Full locked mode: Screw in the Hybrids lock and you'll be in fixed bridge mode. Get perfect double stop bends, easy re-stringing and tuning up. Great for beginners too!