I’ve played guitars since I was a teenager. I discovered the “headless” Steinberger guitars, and was fascinated by them because of their stability and because they are so easy to transport. I bought a few of them, and then wanted to design and build my own. My main interest was to try different pickup configurations, to reduce the visual impact of the pickups and emphasize the exposed wood grain. I also wanted to use polyphonic outputs (hex pickups) to allow more complex sound processing.

I chose a body style similar to the Steinberger “P” body, purchased a graphite neck, a bridge, some lacewood, and came up with my first guitar. It incorporates an off-the-shelf Roland internal pickup system (the black band above the bridge). The bridge, a Trans-Trem, is unique in that one can increase the string tension in such a way that the notes transpose up or down while the instrument stays in tune.

For my second guitar, I decided to use a “Ghost” hex piezo pickup system; the pickups mount in each bridge saddle. To do that, I had to build the bridge itself in my shop.