I’m looking for a guitar with a THIN WIDE neck (for shredding type playing) but that does NOT have a floating bridge or locking nut for $1,000 or less and not that heavy (in terms of weight). This would seem pretty simple, but man I just cannot find a decent one.
Suggestions?
Another option would be to get a decent guitar with a non-locking nut but a floating bridge, and use something like this to lock the bridge:
Ideally, I’d love to get a PRS SE custom 24 (about $600) and pair it with the above. Has anyone used the Tremol-no?
I’d check out Ibanez, Tony. I’ve played quite a few and they all had sweet necks. Price point is very reasonable, IMHO.
Yes, I know Ibanez as that basically is all that I play. 
But the cheaper Ibanez’s are pretty crappy and almost NONE of them have a fixed bridge, which is the main thing I want.
So to reiterate - I want a LIGHT guitar with a THIN WIDE neck (both of which rule out anything by Gibson), dual coil pickups (which rules out most Fenders), quality but under $1000 and most importantly, with a fixed bridge and without locking nuts (the latter two rule out most Ibanez’s and ESP’s).
Almost every model of Ibanez has a fixed bridge option. 
Yes. It is very effective. I like it better than what I did before (adding springs and tension and blocking).
If you are handy, you can install it yourself (especially if you plan to NEVER use the trem) … if you’re not handy, take it to a tech/luthier for installation.
Using the tremol-no is like buying a blow-up doll and stitching up the holes. 
Not really, since the whole POINT of the tremol-no is that you can either fully fix the bridge OR have it just bend downward OR have full floating up / down motion, all just by tightening / loosing thumb screws. In theory, that’s pretty cool. But the MAIN thing I want is to be able to fix the bridge to do alternate tunings (even something as simple as a drop D) on the fly without having to spend a hour adjusting spring tension of a floating bridge.
So I’m either getting a PRS SE Custom 24 (orange) with a floating bridge but the tremol-no installed OR an Ibanez RGA42fm (blue) with a fixed bridge. Both play really well AND are fairly inexpensive.
http://www.prsguitars.com/secustom24/
http://www.ibanez.com/ElectricGuitars/model-RGA42FM
Opinions?
At the risk of stating the obvious … get BOTH! And please … no balking at this solution. No mention of budgetary constraints! Budgets and music gear … especially guitars … are mutually exclusive. You know I’m right.
That PRS has a trem. Not a floater, but still a trem. I’d go with the Ibanez in the 8 string flavor.
Price points?
You are misunderstanding. Almost ALL guitars with trems these days (even if they don’t have locking nuts) have FLOATING bridges - meaning that the bridge is not resting on the body but it “floating” such that the spring tension is offset by the string tension to keep the bridge level and where it should be. If you do ANYTHING to offset this balance - detune a string, change string gauge, break a string, etc - everything goes out of tune. I’m sure you know this but I’d thought I’d go through it anyway.
My main guiar has a Ibanez edge floating bridge which is great, but there are time that I have to do a drop D tuning or some other alt tuning on the fly and it just can’t be done with a floating bridge. Thus, the need for a fixed bridge guitar. It has nothing to do with the USE of the trem itself.
Actually, the PRS is a FLOATING bridge. If I bought it, I was going to use the Tremol-no to block the bridge so it essential becomes fixed even though it leaves the whammy useless.
I have counselled you before rgearding your guitar purchases; here me now! 
Are you familiar with the guitar iconoclast Ed Roman? He feels the only two mass maunfacturers that still make quality guitars are Ibanez and Hamer (he still likes PRS but advocates a fair amount of luthier work to make them right).
Anyway, what about something like a used Hamer Artist USA? They’re quality guitars but the prices on used are reasonable. A site I check out occasionally is Guitar Center’s used gear site – they rank the instruments in terms of condition, they offer a 30-day return, you buy a warranty, and – you can call the particular store that the guitar is at and talk to a person about the specific axe you’re interested in. I think most Hamers come with Duncans… having had a couple, the necks on the USA’s are superb
Or… you could pull a John Five and buy a Telecaster, or a G&L Tele, for under $1000. Quality. Easy to detune quickly. Regarding “balls” I think John Five’s work certainly has that, in spades
Ed Roman!!?? He has a worse rap than Bernie Madoff!!
Rev.
I believe the Ibanez ZR tremolo uses a dual-tension spring… you can play havoc with the whammy and it stays in tune. Ironically, Tony once upon a time played an S Series that had that termolo (unless it was an early S)
All Ibanez tremolos have floating bridges. The ZR trems stabalize the tuning moreso than normal locking trems, but you still cannot do alternate tunings with dramatically changing string tension - so certainly not on the fly. That’s the main reason that I want a second guitar - to be able to do on-the-fly alternative tunings, particulary a drop-D or the whole guitar a half a step flat, as there are a lot of songs that do both. You pretty much need a fixed bridge for doing that.
You’ve answered your question.
Fixed bridge. Full stop.
Actually, there’s a whole bunch of CURRENT guitars that have non-locking trems - PRS, Gibsons, Fenders, etc. Most have locking tuners which help.
Tony
If you want to change tunings often on the fly I wouldn’t recommend the tremel-no. While it’s a great device it does have certain limits and many have reported alternate tunings causing the tremel-no to slip due to the increased pull. The metal shaft of the tremel-no is smooth, obviously so the action when using it is also smooth. But smooth = less grip for the locking screws.
I wanted to recommend Schecter guitars to you as they have a great selection of fixed bridge guitars that are excellent quality and low prices. I own two, a 7-string and an 8-string. However, some models have somewhat beefier neck thickness. Though from what I’ve seen they’ve been thinning their neck profiles now since that was always the single biggest complaint against Schecters. They seemed to have listened up because my 8-string neck is thinner than my 7 which has a pretty thick neck. I can only suggest trying a few out in a store.
Rev.