Floyd Rose "Whale Tail" Project

My 2022 Floyd Rose "Whale Tail" project. I was fortunate to stumble on the Period Correct Guitar Parts site and used their saddles on a new (2022) Original Floyd Rose. There were a lot of good deals on Original, German-made Floyd base plates in late 2022, so I splurged and bought two satin chrome (Titanium Project and one I assembled/used on my Charvel EVH Megazone), two satin black (both TBD), and one chrome for this "Whale Tail" project.

1983 Floyd Rose "Whale Tail" example - made by Hansen MetalWorks USA in early 1983 as the Schaller factory ramped up to tooling before taking over
EVH holding the 5150 with the 1983 Floyd Rose "Whale Tail", circa 1986
5150 "Whale Tail" close-up

BRIEF FLOYD ROSE TREMOLO "FRT" HISTORY

1976-78 - Floyd Rose designed and created the first locking tremolo prototypes
1979-80 - FRT-1 no FR logo, hump saddles, no fine tuners, around 50 made in the USA and went to the well-known guitarists at the time (Edward Van Halen, Neal Schon, Brad Gillis, Randy Hansen, etc.)
1981 - FRT-1 made by Fernandes in Japan
1982 - FRT-2 Fernandes: string-through version of the FRT-1
1982 - FRT-3 Fernandes: re-designed saddles for the FRT-1 with Floyd Rose logo
1982 - FRT-4 Fernandes: vertical fine tuners added in late 1982
1983 - FRT-5 mostly same as the current "Original" model; manufactured first by Fernandes, then Schaller (via Kramer), with Hansen MetalWorks USA making some in early 1983 (off-centered Floyd Rose logo) as the Schaller factory ramped up to produce; these early 1983 models are also known as the "Whale Tail"
1983 - Schaller begins making both the "FRT-5" (w/ fine tuners) and the "FRT-3" (no fine tuners) for Kramer
TODAY - the German-made "Original" model still produced by Schaller as just the "FRT"