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I'm glad you brought this up. I put staggered sperzels on my USACG strat neck hoping to eliminate string treees. I've got open string buzz on the high e string and thought it might be a badly cut nut slot. I suspect you are correct that it is just too shallow of an angle running from the nut to the peg to put the proper pressure on the nut. If I press the string behind the nut after it is plucked, the buzz disappears and the note sustains with greater volume and clarity. I just really hate to drill into that beautiful nitro USACG headstock.

Peter

I guess tonality won out over aesthetics...I went ahead and installed 2 string trees and put life back into the open strings. The staggered height Sperzels are a good idea but just don't quite produce enough angle and pressure imo. The trees came off the neck I bought from the other guys...I'm not sure who the hardware supplier is, Allparts? In any case, there's a huge difference in sound with the string guides, very pleased.

Here's a pic: I had some trouble navigating the upload features and couldn't get the "before" pictures on but you can easily see that with the trees, the break angle for all strings at the nut look consistent and proper...except the low e because I wasn't use to tying on to the Sperzels and buggered it up.

I'd love to share some other photos of this guitar at some point, it has some nice features:

'99 AmStd Strat Olympic White w/white pickguard
USACG 1/4 Sawn Maple/Rosewood neck, Asymmetric, nitro finish, 1.65" bone nut, 6100 frets
Callaham 2-point to 6-point conversion vintage bridge with Callaham block, springs, claw, hardware, etc
VanZandt blues pickups

Peter

Schneidas--the conversion kit is essentially a barrel with an external thread that threads into the strat insert that's pressed into the body. The barrel also has internal threads that will accept the new Callaham pivot screws for the floating tremolo. The difficulty is setting the barrel position in the hole so that it allows the pivot screws to seat properly which is critical. The barrel depth position is variable depending on the depth of the drilled hole in your strat. To compensate for this, there is a drive screw inside the barrel that is used to find the bottom of the hole while in turn allows positioning the barrel to the proper height. I'm probably making it sound more confusing than it is...the instructions are very clear. It was a little bit of a trial and error though.

Also, I was confident to go with the vintage bridge/saddles having the extra width because my neck was 1.650" at the nut which sort of compensates for the extra width at the bridge, and the frets are not overly beveled at the edges.

Thoroughly satisfied with all of the Callaham parts.

(not seeing the picture I posted, is it gone?)
Peter

"......do you have to keep the vintage Callaham bridge floating when using the conversion kit or does it work fine for putting the bridge flush on the body? "


no you can set the bridge flush and would work fine, you just have to set the barrel position with that in mind.

Peter