I find that Headless Guitars are really interesting from a design concept point of view, the way they are strung-up and tuned is a bit different to conventional guitars, the strings are anchored at the headstock end of the neck and the tuners are part of the bridge, on the bridge you have the usual string saddles behind that, and inline with the saddle, is where the tuner for the string is located, the tuner consists of a metal claw which the string's brass ball-end fits into, a fine-thread screw with a knurled knob on it pulls the string's brass ball-end away from the saddle when you tune the string up to pitch, the bridge pivots on a couple of knife-edges like a Floyd Rose bridge, here's another difference, the Steinberger Headless Guitar bridge system uses just one spring to balance the bridge with the string-tension, there's also a locking mechanism that locks the bridge so that it operates as a fixed bridge system.


To tune one of these Headless guitars, you first activate the bridge locking mechanism, next you tune each string up to pitch using the knurled knobs, once the strings are all tuned to pitch you unlock the bridge, after that you use the master-tune knob to balance-out the bridge-spring tension with the string tension so that when all the strings are tuned to pitch the bridge floats in it's neutral position.


So what are these guitars are like to play?, they are very similar to conventional guitars going by what I remember when I did my test fit, the fact that there's no headstock sometimes makes you think your fretting hand is in the wrong position, but it doesn't take long to get used to, the tone of the guitar is very similar to a conventional one.


You may find that the feel of the trem might be a bit stiff though.