I may have stumbled upon something, true ZEN fashion (again proving there are no zen MASTERS only ZEN PRACTITIONERS). I set my floating bridge parallel with the body, as many luthiers on YouTube have suggested. I tried all sorts of things to get the whammy bar to remain in tune, after use. After practising all the whammy bar techniques, to see which I might find a use for, and simply to have 'covered my bases', of course the springs have loosened a little, leaving the bridge floating much higher than I had intended. But I noticed that after using my whammy bar, and without having lubricated the nut, bridge, or string trees since weeks ago, that it appears to remain in tune now. Now it may be that the springs have 'settled'. Suggesting you should use your whammy a lot, when new, to 'stretch' it in, just like you do with new strings. And/or that that the bridge was originally intended to be floated quite high off the body. Given that the individual bridge pieces will usually be screwed up and away from the body, this means that when the angle BEHIND the bridge rises, the saddle pieces end up fairly parallell / level with the neck. Now we've effectively reduced friction at maybe the main friction point that is problematic when using the whammy. Consider how with a bridge plate 'flush' with the body, there will be a 'waterfall' of string over the edge of the saddle pieces. The string will be 'curving over' the bridge piece. Adding more points of friction for the string to 'catch' on during whammy bar use. And when you raise the saddle pieces as part of adjusting your string height / 'action', you will be further 'waterfalling' the string over the bridge piece, and adding even a greater surface area of string making contact with the metal of the saddle piece. Adding even greater opportunity / risk for the string to 'grab' and 'catch' when you use the whammy bar. And remembering that THIS is what leads to strings being 'out of tune' after whammy bar use, namely string friction / strings catching and grabbing at contact points along their length, AFTER having 'slid' along those contact points, then FAILING to slide BACK to their original position, and thus returning the string to its original effective vibrating LENGTH, we may have found a 'solution' to the age old problem associated with the standard Fender tremolo. In other words we have discovered something it appears Leo Fender hadn't explained to us. That his tremolo works fine, as long as you FLOAT it quite high.
O.K. So first all I noticed was that I had more potential for INCREASING the pitch of notes. Of stretching the string. Only LATER did I notice that the strings were NOT going out of tune. And then of course I realised the only down side to this. That you would have to PUSH the whammy closer to the strings now (though the same actual distance as before) in order to totally remove tension from the strings, for 'dive bombing' and so on.
But it seems pretty much a win-win. And maybe just one more contribution I can offer. Given there is 'nothing new under the sun', and most 'ideas' are re-discovered, rather than discovered, or merely shared, after having been kept secrete, I can only wonder if Leo Fender DID make a note of this, and no-one listened? I will keep you up to date, concerning the tuning stability. But for now here are some pictures taken with my old phone.