Making the Guitar Body

Made of black limba with a beautiful quilted maple top, Vance describes the body as “somewhere between a Klein guitar on top and a ‘sitting friendly’ design that Aaron and I came up with for our first guitar which worked out VERY VERY well – better than the Klein I used to have, IMHO.”

Key to the instrument’s seated position is its placement on the left leg instead of the standard right leg position. Vance thinks “the angle of the instrument is absolutely divine while seated this way.”

Its builder describes how he came up with the shape:

Basically, Vance wanted the instrument to fit him the way he prefers to sit and the way he stands. I took tape measure cardboard and duct tape as well as life size cut-outs of a Klein and had Vance sit down so that I could fit him. I then did my best to achieve the proper weight, carves and balancing point.

Strat Width Neck Meets Steinberger Trem

The Moses Graphite neck is based on their Baritone Strat replacement neck which means it’s as wide as a Strat at the nut. Vance prefers this to the standard headless neck which he describes as “VERY VERY thin at the nut…so much so that I find them nearly unplayable.”

A unique feature is its use of both a Moses Headless nut (which accepts double ball end strings and regular strings) AND a Floyd Rose locking mechanism. It’s to facilitate a technique of Vance’s:

I have developed a technique in which I use the Floyd Rose locking system to attach a metal dowel to the neck of the instrument, which I then bow, creating very eerie and ethereal harmonics which shimmer down the strings and into the pickups. This is a technique I devised while using a ‘normal’ guitar and wanted to maintain the ability to perform this way with this new instrument.

That said, I can remove the locking pieces from the Floyd nut and it becomes a “normal” nut right away. Tuning stability is excellent on this instrument.

At the other end is the XS-Trem – a remake of the Steinberger S-Trem. Vance describes it as having very smooth travel and finds it effortless compared to a Floyd or Wilkinson bridge.

Sonic Diversity

The choice of electronics is quite unique ranging from a Alumitone pickups in the bridge and middle positions, a Sustainiac in the neck and a Roland GK-3:

Two of the knobs control the instrument volume and the Sustainiac mode and gain (both are Push/Pull). The other two knobs are a rotary 6 position pickup selection (Neck, Neck-Center, Center, Center-Bridge, Bridge, All) and Roland GK volume. The instrument also features a Roland GK-3 internally mounted. The two switches for the GK-3 (which can be assigned in the VG-99 or other devices to send just about any MIDI command or to select pickups or…well, just about ANYthing) are located very near the strings.

It appears in photos that these would be easy to accidentally bump but many, many experiments have born out my assertion that fingers will pass over these (VERY low profile) buttons while strumming and picking the instrument. Placing the buttons here makes it very easy to access them while playing. I map them to delay triggers on some of the custom plugins that I write, creating an effect where I can quickly tap in a delay repeat pattern (Not just tempo) that matches the song I am playing. Endless fun there. Straplocks keep everything in place.

Finally, while ergonomic instruments aren’t his main focus, Aaron Andrews did share this:

I can’t say that it is my primary thrust as a luthier but I have and continue to keep my customer’s needs foremost in my endeavor, so long as it is within me to serve. That said, I was fascinated with the Klein when I first saw it in Guitar Player magazine when I was too young and too poor to even dream of it. Gotta say though, I did have a love affair with an Ovation Breadwinner!

As with a prior conversation about a year ago, the parts page is there strictly for Reith Guitar owners. These are sold strictly as replacement parts. Too bad really since the parts look quite interesting.

But even with the recent news that Musicyo is no longer selling guitar parts, plenty of resources remain. Check out Headless Guitar Parts Resources for a list of headless guitar bridge options. Many of these are fixed bridge options but Strandberg’s drop in Floyd Rose replacement bridge looks very promising for those who need some whammy with their playing. Expect a major rewrite of this resource soon.

What’s unclear is what’s happening to the headless guitar parts line. Despite constant problems with availability, Musicyo.com was the official seller of both Steinberger and Synapse parts. Will these headless guitar parts now appear in the retail channel? A quick review of several official online retailers showed only guitars available – no parts.

As follow up, I’ll be reaching out to Gibson Guitar Company to find out more about the parts situation. I’ll also be overhauling the popular article Headless Guitar Parts Resources to account for these changes as well as additional headless bridge resources and ideas.

Thanks to guitar bridge maker Jon Bondy for pointing out this news.

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.

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.

ETS Headless Guitar Bridge Solutions

Besides its more standard offerings, ETS makes a variety of headless guitar bridges for both bass guitar and electric guitar. Standard choices range from 4 string to 7 string bridges.

These are available in one of two aesthetic choices – an angular look and a rounded look.

Pictured here is a 4 string angular solution:

And here is a 5 string rounded solution:

Custom Solutions Available

ETS also made it clear that they are open to building custom solutions if one of their standard offerings doesn’t meet a guitar maker’s needs. This includes custom spacing, special designs, piezo pickups in the bridge, etc. As they say, “inquire within”.

Availability

Bridges are available directly from ETS with a lead time of 15 days (not including shipping) for their standard products with payment available through Paypal.

• Improved balance – By reducing the lever effect of a headstock and tuning keys, it becomes easier to achieve good balance and a good neck angle.
• Reduced weight – A headless design can be lighter overall reducing its impact on the guitarist.
• Increased design flexibility – By practically eliminating the possibility of a neck heavy instrument, you have greater freedom with the shape of the guitar body.
• Centralized mass – By shifting weight closer to the body, the remaining weight is more evenly distributed and carried more easily with less impact on the body. (My addition.)

While, it’s not impossible to accomplish good balance and position with a headstock – consider Rick Toone’s Orchid bass for example – eliminating the weight and lever effect can simplify the design equation.

Mitigating Cost

However, cost is a concern. Headless guitar bridge systems are expensive and that has always been a concern of mine.

Fortunately, there are alternatives approaches that use conventional guitar bridges in a headless format. These expand your choices and reduce dependency on the limited supply of headless guitar parts.

Alternative Approaches

Let’s look at a few examples. The first three use Steinberger gearless tuners in combination with a traditional guitar bridge:

• Henry Olsen ‘s MaSh Acoustic Guitar
• Alternative Headless Guitar Design – TK Instruments
• Headless Guitar Design Alternative – Scott French

These two use conventional guitar tuners:

• The Koll Electric Guitar RE 7/6
• Alternative Headless Guitar Design – Soloette

However, it’s important to note that none of these use a Steinberger type neck and therein lies a major tradeoff. Finding a conventional bridge that matches the string spacing on a Steinberger neck is a challenge. In fact, I suspect such a beast doesn’t exist.

However, it you’re building a neck with your guitar, then anything goes.

Increased Guitar String Choices

The other area where these alternative approaches help is in your choice of guitar strings. A number of headless bridge systems require the use of Steinberger type double ball end strings. And as you might imagine, the number of choices in types and gauges is limited.

By leveraging conventional guitar bridges and tuners, you now have access to the tremendous variety of guitar strings that exist for conventional headstock guitars.

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.

Enter the revolutionary MaSh headless acoustic guitar. It’s the brainchild of musician Henry Olsen who’s played with the likes of Velvet Underground members Nico and John Cale and is probably best known for his bass work with Primal Scream from 1988-1995.

Built by U.K. luthier Dave Dearnaley, the instrument is influenced by the Klein guitars Henry owns and loves both of which are no “ordinary” Kleins. You see, guitars #102 and #104 were previously owned by Bill Frisell. Serial #104 is particularly notable for having been played on Nashville and Good Dog, Happy Man. Henry took his experience with them and applied them to his acoustic guitar concept.

Henry’s initial impressions are very positive. According to Henry…

The guitar is exactly what I wanted. It is as loud acoustically as my Gibson ES125T, as comfortable to play and hold as my Klein and will fit easily into any overhead locker in a train or plane. I miss the top arm rest, which we couldn’t design into the body, but I’m more used to it now than I was at the beginning.

And as you would expect from an ergonomic guitar, the instrument is well balanced and light weight. The MaSh weighs in at a feather weight 4lbs.

Now for some details:

• Top – 4mm thick Spruce with X bracing
• Back – 12mm thick Honduras mahogany carved from a solid billet
• Neck – one piece Indian rosewood with a truss rod, 24 frets and Fender-type nut. (Note the skunk stripe).
• Bridge – Indian rosewood and custom carved
• Steinberger gearless tuners
• String Retainers – Carved into the neck with white plastic to stop the strings rubbing against the wood and to support the nut
• Savarez Argentine Gypsy Jazz Acoustic Guitar Strings – Henry describes these as giving the MaSh a more North African ‘aroma’.

It’s worth noting that the Steinberger tuners proved somewhat problematic. Out of two sets, two tuners were faulty out of the package and two disintegrated during installation. Yet another failed after only a week! Nonetheless, Henry is sticking with them.

The mahogany and rosewood are salvaged wood from an old bank – important in a world where woods for guitar making are increasingly limited.

The next several shots give us a closer look at some of the details on the MaSh.

Unlike a typical acoustic, the MaSh includes a belly contour, a heel cutaway and extensive contouring – made possible by the fact that the back is carved from a single block of wood! You can also make out some of the Spruce top’s bracing:

Here’s a shot of the smooth heel contouring:

And, here are the Steinberger tuners from the rear of the guitar:

This closeup of the rosewood neck shows us the string retainer integrated into the neck as well as the Fender like “skunk stripe” for the truss rod:

The big question though is… “how does it sound?” Henry had this to say of his creation:

It has the acoustic sound of a hollow-bodied Thinline Gibson, e.g. 125, 330 or Byrdland but produces more volume. Low mids are weaker, bass is hardly present, but all other frequency bands are well-represented.

The acoustic contact microphone in the body does an excellent job and with EQ boost, the guitar sounds quite rich and full, with the sound tending more towards a Maccaferri than a Martin or Guild. I prefer to play the guitar acoustically.

I use Dugain ram’s horn picks and a Selmer Stadium 14 W combo or a Fender Princeton Reverb when I (rarely) need an amp.

From everything Henry has shared, the MaSh acoustic guitar is a great success both musically and ergonomically. Consider that this guitar is essentially a proof of concept and it’s even more impressive. Imagine what further tweaking might accomplish!

Its very success is a challenge to guitar makers to explore new territory as the MaSh clearly shows that there is a great deal of room for successful experimentation in designing acoustic guitars.

Many thanks to Henry Olsen for his wonderful guitar design as well as the pictures and details that made this article possible.

Acoustic Guitar

The first set of headless tuners is on an acoustic guitar Jeff made back in 1989. Jeff shared this:

…the brass was hacksawn and filed, drilled and tapped with just the simplest of tools. It works well and rarely needs any tuning, just climate change. There is even some surface rust but it went back together smooth.

Here are the tuners from another angle:

Simple and elegant. What more can I say?

Bowl Back Bass Guitar

This instrument was started along with the guitar above and finished in 1993 while taking a slightly different form to tuning the headless bass.

Here’s another view:

And here’s a nice shot of the overall instrument:

Electric Guitar

Next, we take a look at a much more complex design:

The electric is from ’87 and I used a milling machine and drill press to make the bridge and tuners. They use ball bearings but its overkill and adds too much weight but I was after the sustain.

Sustain indeed!

Jeff also shared the following details about making the headless guitar tuners:

I’ve built 4 headless instruments, each time making the tuners with 35mm long M3 screws, with wood or brass head added. Then from brass stock cut blocks, hand drilled and tapped an M3 thread to get the 11mm of movement required to bring the string to pitch. This holds the ball end and a M4 allen key grub screw clamps the other. None of this requires special machines. The screws are from electrical supply shops. A thin shim of plastic does the job of ball bearing races. (Portuguese guitars have a similar system, well worth checking out).

Another one of our readers, Michael Preston, shared this great link to an example of a Portuguese guitar or guitarra portuguesa that Jeff references. Thank you Michael!

I suspect a few of us will now be sneaking off to the workshop in search of our own headless guitar tuner solutions.

Many thanks to Jeff Turpin for sharing his work with us.

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…

For tonal variety, Alan’s guitar includes Schaller Golden 50′s pups, a Duncan single coil, and a Graptek piezo bridge.

This next view gives us a great look at the mahogany back and the contouring where the glued in laminate neck and guitar body meet:

Alan had this to share about his results:

So far the guitar works well for rock and overdrive/distortion sounds, really is great for neck pickup clean, smokey jazz sounds, and the piezo sounds great too. Chris matched the neck size and profile of my Benedetto Fratello with a 1 3/4″ nut so it is nice for fingerstyle pieces. The neck is a piece of art. It is the most comfortable neck I own. The fit and finish is impeccable too. Rivals the Benedettos. My idea for this guitar was to be able to do fingerstyle jazz but still be able to use it for rock/gospel and the odd acoustic gig. It looks like it will do all of that well.

I really like the look of this particular model – from its figured top and neck to the choice of colors. For more on this beautiful guitar, including progress pictures, visit Alan’s Guitar List.

For example, I purchased a Musicyo Steinberger in order to obtain the neck, headpiece and bridge necessary for guitar build #1. Because of these issues, I’ve been seeking out examples of headless guitar design alternatives that might provide interesting approaches. See the Related Posts section at the end of this post for more.

Like the TK Instruments guitar seen previously in Alternative Headless Guitar Design – TK Instruments, Scott French’s design moves the tuners down by the bridge and the ball ends of the strings are retained where the headstock would normally be. This general approach uses conventional strings and opens up the opportunity to use a wider variety of necks and bridges.

Scott French’s SF3 Travel Guitar adds an additional detail to the solution by retaining the strings with a through-the-”headstock” design as seen here:

This string retention solution, although a bit more involved to implement than a locking nut, has the advantage of quick string changes without the need for tools. Feed the string through the ferrules and pass the end down to the Steinberger tuners that pass through the guitar body. The solution is both simple and elegant.

This general approach is one to keep in mind for a future guitar build. For more on the design, visit the SF3 Travel Guitar at Scott’s site.

Here is a closer view of the tuners lined up in a row on the body side:

For an updated look at a multi-scale version of this design, check out Koll Guitars Multi-Scale Archtop.

Essentially, a conventional classical guitar headstock and tuners are located at the body side of the guitar. This, in turn, permits the use of conventional bridges. Together, these provide opportunities for increased design and implementation flexibility as well as reduced costs.

A also noted, headless guitar components can be expensive and difficult to find. Given this issue, I have been researching alternative solutions. One such solution can be seen at TK Instruments in the form of luthier Todd Keehn’s Hollow Body Electric Guitar:

Todd Keehn has solved the tuning issue by using Steinberger Gearless tuners at the body side. These tuners, designed originally as substitutes for conventional guitar tuners, are readily available from outfits such as Stewart-MacDonald and open up a number of alternatives. First, with the use of an appropriate headpiece capturing the ball end of the string, we no longer need double ball end strings. While double ball end strings can be difficult to find at times, conventional strings are available everywhere and in much greater variety. Second, this solution provides us with a way to accommodate a fixed bridge for those of us who aren’t interested in tremolos. The Hollow body, for example, uses a fixed piezo bridge. Third, for those with large hands, the large tuners are less cumbersome to operate than the small tuners on the Steinberger tremolo bridge and its alternatives. Fourth, although not the most inexpensive tuners, these locking tuners are priced comparably to more traditional looking locking tuners.

Finally, if you are at all interested in general guitar design, don’t let my focus on the tuning solution stop you from exploring the other elements on Todd Keehn’s guitars. Check out Anatomy of a TK and discover some of the interesting elements and details he incorporates into his various designs such as compound scale necks or Fanned Frets, stainless steel rod frets, asymmetrical neck profiles, etc.

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.