FAQ
General
- Take away the unessential. How much more would you play if your guitar was ½ the weight and 1/3 the body size with the same scale length?
- No, our priorities are :
- Top-grade instrument
- Great Ergonomics
- Guitar nerd friendly
- Travel friendly
- Shortens total length 5”
- Plays better.
- Better balance.
- More robust, less neck breakage
- Headless Pros & Cons
- Front connection uses a Dunlop flush quick disconnect on the upper “Bout”
- Rear connection is on the top end pin jack, like an acoustic
- Aluminum, wood, and carbon fiber. They all are in a parallel load path between the bridge and neck.
- Trying to find your sound is easier with flexibility. We feel the easier a change is, the more likely you are to try it.
- Why not try more pickup locations and fore/aft angles easily without routing a body, all in pursuit of your sound and pickup blend? Want to try a Hendrix reverse bridge pickup or a Steve Morse HSSH? Easy.
- Fast change out gives you quicker feedback, without forgetting what you felt about the last mod.
- Actually, it is a combination stack volume and tone knobs, similar to a typical bass
- Individual 3 position switches control each pickup. The middle position is a “tweak” mode. They are located on the upper bout.
- For lots of options
- Steinberger, Teuffel “Bird and Fish”, Vox headless “Starstream “, Strandberg, Glitter, Rick Toone, Erlewine, Moss, Klien, David King, Murray Kuun, Norton, Xavier
- 30 days trial, full refund w/ no damage
- Limited 5yr
- Unfortunately we only offer Hendrix style rights flipped over. Strap buttons are switched.
- Not yet
Hardcore
- Shortens total length 5”
- Plays better. All guitar structures are excited by string vibration. The mass and structure of the head, tuners, (string locks) etc. cantilevered at a distance from the body contribute to dead notes on the neck. Helmut Fleischer (’99) showed how even different shaped headstocks (Les Paul and Strat) effected the vibrational modes of the neck.
- Better balance, tuning keys and headstock are big contributors to neck dive.
- Better midi pitch detection. Less wolf and sheep tones along neck mean better midi note detection.
- Looks good?
- Why Headless? Tech Blog deep dive Why headless?
- Body needs to be very stiff to compensate for lack of mass.
Neck
- Although available necks could stand some improvements, the Strt neck accessory market provides loads of reasonably priced options to customize from. Scale lengths, wood types, number of layers, back shapes, fretboard wood/scalloping, tension bar types, fret sizes/type, inlays, etc. etc. More options to fit your hands, feel, and sound.
- No neck dive. Excellent balance, the neutral point is ~ 21st fret
Body
- Not necessarily, and this guitar isn’t all aluminum. Aluminum doesn’t damp as well as wood, so a designer must be more careful.
- More on aluminum hybrids
- All the body vibs you feel on your belly and the vibs your clip-on-tuner feel, get back to the strings through the bridge and nut. Good luck not having any effects when you are exciting the string endpoints. Easier to hear body effects on electric resonator guitars and hollow bodied electric guitars. Also check out the sustainers mounted to the saddles ala. Keith McMillen. Vibrating saddles effect the string. Most of the effects are measurable, a lot less are audible.
Module
- The pickup module works in parallel with the body moving vibs between neck to bridge. Also, a wood module would dampen some of those frequencies and accent others.
- The module delivers body vibs to the direct mounted pickup. The pickup relative motion to the string is then part of your sound.
- Type of wood; alder, swamp ash, spruce, etc. all effect which frequencies get damped.
- Structural design changes in the modules shape change the amplitude and frequencies delivered, like soundboard construction on acoustic guitars. Structural design especially effects pickup motion and additional piezo’s sound frequencies.
- The pickup module, a simple internal part, is open sourced to encourage DIY modules. We’ll encourage sharing of customer created designs and sales on our site.
- Yes the pickup module will act much like a sound board, depending on the structural cutouts. Piezos mounted to it respond, and mix bridge and neck vibs.
- Potentially, if the space between pickups is left open and played at high volume, earlier feedback can result
- Most all 6-string SingleCoil and Humbucker pickups …. Except: Fender
- Wide Range Humbucker needs mounting flange mod
- Fender Jazzmaster won’t work at all
Hardware
- Every nook and cranny where an improvement could be made, we went for it. We think you’ll find our tuners are the best.
- Guiding the designs was great sound, ergonomics, mechanically robust (threads don’t strip easily, wood dosen’t need repair), low string breakage and quick stringing
Electronics
DIY
- The wooden pickup module carrier back is open source. We would like to encourage experimentation and various options in this area.
- Sure, that would be a great way to try out new pickup position layouts; but structural shapes might be hard to evaluate due to the printed-material sound properties.