The ABM Bridge Drawing

Overall, his impression was that the “parts seemed to be pretty good quality, I assume they are Brass, they are non magnetic and I doubt they are stainless. The chrome finish seems to be of good quality.” However, it came with no instructions which led him to sit down with a digital caliper and micrometer to arrive at the drawing made available below:

To download the plan, right click on the link and choose to save:
ABM Headless Bridge Drawing – 24 KB

Note: Romano indicated that the drawing was fairly accurate but warned against expecting total accuracy.

Bridge & Tuning Tailpiece

Romano on the bridge and tuner assemblies:

The bridge & tuner seem to only be held down with 2 #6 screws about 1″ long (possibly M4 wood screws). I will most likely use longer stainless screws since they seem a little flimsy.

It appears that they just screw right on top of the body without any routing – certainly makes life easier.

Headpiece

One nice feature Romano documents is the ABM headpiece’s support for conventional guitar strings and double ball end strings.

The headpiece is mounted with 2 #8 (or M6) wood screws. There is an individual allen screw for each string so double ball end strings are NOT required.

Using this headpiece would still require you to use a nut or zero fret. If you wanted to use the head piece with an off the shelf neck it may be a little tricky but not impossible. An alternative may be to use a Floyd Rose style locking nut with a mini headstock. It would certainly be easier to fabricate.

Note: See the Redwood Top Forshage Guitar Revisited for an example of the mini headstock and ABM headless bridge system in action.

Wrap-Up

As with the release of Romano Zambon’s Electric Guitar Plan, it’s his hope that these drawings are helpful to the guitar building community.

Thank you, Romano!

More Necks, More Strings

Ola’s design brings huge benefits in choice to both the guitarist and the guitar builder. By basing it on the Floyd Rose bridge, neck options are wide open compared to Steinberger based necks. In addition, the Strandberger bridge works with conventional guitar strings thus eliminating the constraints around the limited choices in double ball end strings.

Light Weight

The Strandberg bridge also wins big in the weight department. Compared to the 600 grams of the Floyd Rose and tuners used for comparison, the Strandberg weighs a mere 140 grams. And did I mention, it looks great?

Playing the Strandberger Bridge

Ola provides sound samples of the Floyd Rose and his Strandberg in his article Sound Advice and the results are more than promising. And while he identified some remaining challenges, progress has been excellent and I’m confident that Ola’s methodical and thoughtful approach will solve any remaining issues.

When planning guitar build #1, one of my goals was a reduction in the instrument’s weight. So I started with a thinner than standard guitar body blank (1.5″ instead of 1.75″) and minimized hardware where possible. However, it hadn’t initially occurred to me just how much pickups might contribute to the weight of an electric guitar. This is where the Alumitones show potential.

Conventional pickups are heavy by nature due to their use of copper wires and magnets to generate voltage as the string is picked. Humbuckers are even heavier because they use two coils in order to accomplish noise cancellation.

Contrast this with the noiseless Alumitones – a fundamentally different approach to pickup design in which an aluminum exoskeleton combines with 90% less wiring resulting in a much lighter pickup.

According to Jeff Lace, the difference is so significant that replacing two conventional humbuckers with his current driven Alumitone pickups results in a 1/2 lb less weight. And in the battle to protect your back, that’s no small improvement.

To learn more about the Alumitone pickup, here’s “Alumitone Design Secret Revealed”:

The tuners are from an electric guitar fitted with a stub headstock and a Floyd Rose locking nut – an arrangement that eliminates the need for double ball end strings. Instead, the guitar takes advantage of the much wider range of standard guitar strings while avoiding potential problems with availability.

In this first photo, we see an interesting aesthetic choice which hides much of the tuning mechanism within the guitar body:

Next, we take a closer up look and see that each tuner fits into what is “simply a piece of square tube from a home depot store”.

Finally, these two photos give us an idea of the basic tuner assembly:

Thanks to Marin Marynowski for sharing his idea for guitar tuners as seen in his original guitar forum thread.

It’s confirmed – ABM Mueller, guitar parts maker and maker of headless guitar bridge systems, is back in business!

In a reply from ABM, the company confirmed that it is under new leadership and will complete its move to its new office and factory in Berlin. They were able to retain the expertise of much of the staff and look forward to resuming production March 2008.

ABM will be at the upcoming international tradeshow Frankfurt Musikmesse (March 12-15, 2008) in booth 4.0 D90. If you happen to be strolling by at the time, stop in and welcome ABM back!

Many thanks to David King of David King Bass Guitars for the lead on this story.

Requirements

With the use of heavy strings, David found that his Klein guitar’s Trans-Trem would not float properly and ended up using it as a fixed bridge. This opened up the opportunity for the Trans-Trem to be swapped out with a bridge specifically designed for fixed use.

I was happy to pursue this with Jon because his design would satisfy my most basic requirements. I could get a bridge and a spare, never have to search for Trans-Trem parts ever again, and not have to alter my Klein in any way. That’s all I was originally hoping to get out of this.

Fortunately, David found that he got quite a bit more than he expected…

The Bondy Bridge in Use

The bridge is machined from aluminum and David guesses that it’s probably about 10 oz lighter – a significant weight savings for those looking to keep instruments as light weight as possible for ergonomic reasons.

But how does it all sound? David discusses his findings:

More surprising, the tone of the bridge far exceeded the tone of the Trans-Trem. Now, I know these things are subjective and others may disagree, I couldn’t believe the difference. The bass notes were full and piano-like in their clarity. The treble strings were bright and clear, the range seemed extended but never got harsh. The midrange was full and rich, not a hint of mud anywhere. Acoustically the guitar was much louder, so much so that my non-musician roommates commented on this saying things like, ‘wow, that thing is really loud, was it always like that?’ Now my Klein has always been a resonant little bugger but not like this. Amplified the same comments apply, only louder.

David also commented on the Bondy bridge’s tuning stability:

The tuning stability is top notch, it never slips. I thought my TT was stable but again, this is different. Perhaps this is due to my TT having 10 years on it, but still, a nice change. I also found the solid (non brass roller) saddles much easier to intonate.

David’s final analysis? – ” In short, I really love the fixed bridge.”

Many thanks to David for his thoughtful feedback and his attack beagle for watching over the Klein-Bondy guitar.

This latest example is a DIY headless guitar tuning system recently seen on this fretless baritone guitar.

Headpiece

The “headpiece” string retainer is ingeniously simple consisting of copper connector lugs and stainless steel set screws from a local electrical supply store.

Bridge

The bridge is made up of a 35mm x 3mm x 85mm piece of flat steel with 6-25mm aluminum angle irons to support the strings.

Intonation is set by sliding the grooved angle bracket between the two positioning screws that are fastened to the flat bridge plate.

String height is determined by the depth of the groove on the top of the aluminum angle iron and was accomplished with a feeler gauge to determine string height at the 12th fret.

Tailpiece

Finally, the tail piece consists of a 3mm steel angle iron (19mmx 19mm) with six holes drilled through for the tuning bolts. U channels hold the strings in place and two green plastic washers keep the u channel from rotating with the bolt.

For more on this headless tuning solution and the baritone fretless guitar, see Unfretted.com’s Building a Baritone Fretless.

Bondy’s headless bridge works without modification to the guitar body or its bridge cavity and weighs about 0.75 pounds. Its construction breaks down as follows:

• Tuning knobs and the associated threaded rods are stainless steel purchased parts.
• Saddles are steel.
• Remaining parts are aluminum.

The Trans Trem, on the other hand, weighs roughly 1.3 pounds so the Bondy bridge also presents an opportunity for significant weight savings.

Jon was driven to build his own Steinberger compatible fixed bridge replacements by several factors. Jon had this to say:

The impetus for the current bridge project came about as the street price of the Trans Trems (TTs) began to rise, and people began to remove them from their guitars, to sell. They wanted a way to keep the original guitars as functioning instruments, but fixed bridges were not available. Also, quite a few people never used the trem features at all, and wanted a more stable and simpler bridge.

Jon ended up designing a bridge but then found outsourcing in quantities of 10 or so cost-prohibitive. Instead, he took it upon himself to make them in his home shop.

The bridges have been well received with all of them purchased or spoken for and a second run of 11 targeted for late January 2008 availability. One customer has purchased four of them – “one for his GL, one for his Klein, and two for custom guitars to be built by Rick Canton.”

Making these bridges is an involved process::

Some of the parts (tuning slugs and saddles) are very small parts that require a lot of care, and there are a lot of them: I usually do them in batches of 100, and it takes days of very boring and repetitive manual operations. The other is that all of the parts require surface treatment, so that everything is a uniform black, and this step requires a minimum number of parts, and takes over a week at an external vendor.

Price for the six-string fixed bridge is $350. To find out more, see the Bondy headless bridge page.

There’s also a 12 string bridge in the works which we’ll cover as details become available.

Many thanks to Jon Bondy for permission to reproduce the images above as well as his generosity in sharing his headless bridge with BTEG readers.

UPDATE: ABM Mueller has returned! For more, read Guitar Parts Maker ABM Mueller Is Back!

ABM Mueller, makers of high quality guitar parts and a headless bridge seen on several featured guitars, appears to be out of business. Their site is still up but word on this Project Guitar Forum thread is that the owner has passed away, the company sold off its production machinery and the company put up for sale.

For headless guitar makers, its truly bad news since there aren’t many off the shelf options to begin with – see Guitar Building Resources for Headless Guitar Designs. If we’re to continue building headless guitars, we’ll have to find new sources or come up with creative approaches based on conventional guitar parts. One fine example of this latter approach is the previously covered Scott French SF3 Travel Guitar. It uses Steinberger tuners, a conventional TOM bridge and a stub “headstock” to retain conventional strings. Meanwhile, outfits like Allparts may still have ABM bridges in stock.

Updates to follow as warranted…

But unlike building instruments with conventional headstocks, resources for headless instruments are a little harder to come by. Fortunately, there are a number of resources and approaches. The first portion below focuses on a number of vendors delivering quality headless parts. If you’re willing to take an unconventional approach there are examples of headless instruments using conventional parts. And finally, there’s even the opportunity to make your own.

Let’s take a look at what’s out there.

Musicyo.com

Once one of the main providers of headless Steinberger parts, Musicyo.com closed down January 1, 2009. The Steinberger line that was once carried will be available through a retail network but it’s as yet unclear whether the bridge parts will also be available. A quick check of several of the listed retailers did not show any parts availability at this time.

However, if the lower cost models remain available, an alternative is to purchase one and strip it of its bridge, neck and headpiece. If you are fine with a wood neck, the least expensive model in the lineup is the Steinberger Spirit GU-Deluxe seen below:

It was the tactic I took with my Klein style guitar project. I’m aware of at least one guitar builder, Francis Lannie, who has resorted to this method. If you prefer a composite neck, models are available but they are significantly more expensive.

As with the standard Steinberger parts, Synapse parts are no longer available through Musicyo.com. It remains to be seen if these will become available through retail channels.

ABM

ABM makes a fixed bridge for headless designs; however, it is incompatible with Steinberger necks. This bridge is compatible with Strat type necks which can be modified to accept the headpiece ABM manufactures.

For examples of ABM guitar parts in use, see the following:

1. Mats Erikson’s Klein Electric Guitar replica uses ABM single bridges.
2. Chris Forshage’s ergonomic hollowbody electric guitar uses the more typical ABM bridge.

Bondy Guitar Bridge

Jon Bondy makes a fixed bridge drop in replacement for the Trans-Trem, S-Trem and R-Trem Steinberger bridges. See the article Jon Bondy Headless Guitar Bridge.

ETS Hardware

German guitar parts manufacturer, ETS also makes headless guitar bridges ranging from 4 string to 7 string solutions. They’re also open to custom solutions. For more, see ETS Headless Guitar Bridge.

Floyd Rose Speedloader

The Floyd Rose Speedloader Bridge is another potential option. As seen to the left, the Speedloader based guitars are essentially headless guitars. The “headstock” exists merely for aesthetic value – it serves no functional purpose.

According to Tech Support at GuitarPartsDepot.com, the Floyd Rose Speedloader Bridge will work on a Strat guitar. Thus, a headless guitar using the Speedloader can take advantage of the many Strat compatible necks that exist on the market.

One caveat with the Speedloader bridge is that it uses specialized strings which are neither compatible with Steinberger double ball end strings nor conventional strings. Long term availability could be a concern.

Moses Graphite

If you manage to obtain just the bridge and headpiece, Moses Graphite makes a composite neck which is essentially the neck they make for Musicyo.com. They also make a Strat compatible composite neck for use in headless instruments.

Strandberg Guitar Works

Strandberg’s Floyd Rose Replacement Tremolo – Ola Strandberg has designed his very own Floyd Rose drop in replacement tremolo which will work with headless or conventional headstock design. No special strings are required.

Make Your Own Headless Tuners

Several articles have covered various approaches to making your own headless tuners.

Reader Jeff Turpin shows us three approaches he’s taken to making your own headless guitar tuners.

Marcin Marynowski shows us another approach to headless guitar tuning keys

Eric Olds’ Klein style guitar includes a tuning tailpiece. Included in the article is a detailed PDF illustrating how to build one.

Using Conventional Parts

With a little outside-the-box thinking, conventional tuners can be used in a headless design. Here are a few notable examples:

Romano Zambon Electric Guitar Plan uses Steinberger tuners in the body.

Henry Olsen’s MaSh Acoustic Guitar also uses Steinberger tuners in the body but lines them across rather than “stack” them like Romano’s design.

Garncarz Fanned Fret Bass moves the headstock to the back of the bass.

Guitar Building Books and Headless Guitars

If you’re looking for a book on building guitars with headless guitar coverage, look no further than Building Electric Guitars by Martin Koch – also available as an ebook in PDF format.