Steinberger and Headless Guitars Explained: The L2, TransTrem and Today’s Successors

A headless guitar has no headstock. The tuning hardware sits at the bridge end or on the body, the strings are clamped at the nut, and the neck simply stops. The commercial version of the idea came from one furniture designer, Ned Steinberger, whose carbon-fibre basses and guitars of the late 1970s and 1980s brought headless designs to market; Steinberger’s own timeline says demand for the L2 exceeded supply in 1982. This guide follows the design from its first prototype to the Strandberg, Kiesel, Ibanez and Steinberger Spirit instruments, and says where the sources disagree.

Details below come from manufacturer pages read on October 16, 2026, a US patent, and articles in Premier Guitar, Guitar.com and Bass Musician. Where a claim rests on one account, we say whose it is.

What “Headless” Means and Why Ned Steinberger Built One

Steinberger was not a guitarist. Premier Guitar’s Don Greenwald writes that Ned was not a player and came to bass design through the luthier Stuart Spector. Paul Kobylensky’s Premier Guitar history says Spector, then a guitar builder, asked Steinberger, a furniture designer and fellow member of his woodworking co-op, for help with a new electric bass, and that the result was the first Spector NS bass.

The reason for removing the headstock was balance. In Kobylensky’s account, Steinberger concluded that the headstock and its tuning machines caused neck dive, so he moved the tuners to the body and dropped the headstock. Steinberger told Bass Musician: “I couldn’t get the bass to balance right with a headstock.” In a Q&A on Steinberger’s own site, undated and with an unnamed interviewer, he says he conceived the headless bass in 1977, first tried counterweights, and treated comfort and ergonomics as the top priority. He also says headstock tuning is a tradition inherited from acoustic instruments, whose soundboards had to stay light.

He was not the first to try it. Guitar.com says Les Paul built a headless guitar in the 1940s from aluminium and could not keep it in tune or intonate it, so he never marketed it. Premier Guitar’s history treats the Les Paul story only as a rumour. We cannot settle that from the sources we opened, so we treat it as an open claim.

From the Prototype to the L2 Bass

Greenwald’s 2011 Premier Guitar article describes a one-off prototype that Steinberger says he finished around 1977 at the Brooklyn Woodworkers Co-op and sold around 1979. According to Greenwald, it was molded as one structure of continuous carbon fibre from the headpiece to the tuners, with a phenolic fretboard, an aluminium headpiece and bridge machined by a Brooklyn machinist, and four conventional open-gear tuners on an appendage at the base of the body. Greenwald says he found it in an August 2011 listing and that Steinberger confirmed it from photos. Greenwald, who wrote the article, was the buyer, so the provenance is his account and we repeat it with that caveat.

The production L2 followed. Steinberger’s own history timeline lists graphite-reinforced epoxy prototypes in 1977, the L2 design in 1979 with three prototypes sold to John Entwistle, Tony Levin and Andy West of the Dixie Dregs, the founding of Steinberger Sound Corporation in 1980, and a patent on the L2 design the same year. The timeline places the L2’s debut at the NAMM summer show in 1979 and adds that it won wide notice at the Frankfurt Musik Messe in 1981. Kobylensky and Bass Musician place the L2 at the 1980 NAMM show, so the debut date depends on which source you follow.

The reception was cold at first. Steinberger’s Q&A says many people at that NAMM show dismissed the plastic headless basses and that Andy West of the Dixie Dregs played one at a Chicago event, after which the booth was crowded. Kobylensky’s version has West playing a Steinberger at a NAMM concert. Bass Musician’s Tim Fletcher reports that critics called the instruments “cricket bats” and “egg-boxes,” and quotes Steinberger recalling that, with only a half dozen basses made, people felt “we were a joke.”

How the Steinberger Design Works

Composite construction

The L-series was molded rather than carved. Heiko Hoepfinger, a bassist and maker who wrote for Premier Guitar in 2014, describes graphite construction in two parts, a one-piece body and neck plus a faceplate. The parts dealer Headless USA, whose model guide we treated as a secondary reference, says the L-series was molded carbon graphite and fibreglass and was nicknamed the boat oar, paddle or broom. Guitar.com’s Justin Beckner says the early instruments, from 1979 to 1986, used a glass-fibre and carbon-fibre blend, which the company called the “Steinberger Blend,” and that later designs began to include wood.

Bass Musician reports that Steinberger chose composite to avoid the inconsistency of wood and a “dead spot” around the fifth fret on the G string, and names the boatbuilder and carbon-fibre expert Bob Young as an influence. Terminology varies by source, with “graphite,” “carbon fibre” and “carbon graphite” all used for the same family of materials, and no source we opened gives a single formal specification.

Tuning at the bridge and double-ball strings

With no headstock, the strings are anchored at the nut end and tuned at the other. Steinberger’s Q&A says the ball ends on both ends of the string let it attach and detach quickly and give strong tuning stability, and that an earlier arrangement used set screws at the head. On the current basses and guitars, Steinberger’s pages list a patented 40:1 ratio direct-pull tuning system and factory DoubleBall strings, with an optional single-ball adaptor for ordinary strings. The Q&A says this direct-pull tuner replaced earlier worm-gear tuners on the bass.

The TransTrem

Beckner says the TransTrem vibrato, introduced in 1984, raises and lowers a whole chord at once and can lock in position, acting like a capo. He adds that it needs double-ball strings made by D’Addario, La Bella or Steinberger and that its patent has lapsed. Steinberger’s history timeline also dates the TransTrem to 1984.

The patent record fits that description. US 4,632,005, “Tremolo mechanism for an electric guitar,” names Ned Steinberger as inventor and Steinberger Sound Corp. as the original assignee, was filed on October 1, 1984 and granted on December 30, 1986, and is listed as expired. Its text describes a pivot plate that detunes all the strings roughly evenly while keeping their pitch relationships, strings that preferably carry a ball on each end seated in sliders, and a lock whose grooves correspond to fixed musical intervals. We did not find a source naming this patent number as the TransTrem’s, so the match is our reading of the patent text, not a stated fact.

Steinberger the Company

The company’s own timeline moves the operation to Newburgh, New York, in 1983 to raise production, and says demand for the L2 exceeded supply by 300 percent in 1982. It lists the GL prototype guitar in 1982 and the XL-2 and GL-2 replacing the L2 and the GL prototype in 1984. Headless USA’s guide says the L-series covers both guitars and basses, with the GL following the revised XL bass; Kobylensky says Steinberger guitars followed in 1982.

Gibson bought the company in 1987, per Steinberger’s timeline, Kobylensky and Bass Musician. Guitar.com gives 1986, so we treat 1987 as the better-supported date. Guitar.com says Steinberger began building instruments under the NS Design name in 1990 because Gibson owned the Steinberger name, and that it makes violins, cellos, upright basses and bass guitars. The timeline then records a move to Nashville and the launch of the more affordable “Spirit by Steinberger” line in 1992, production suspended for more than a year by 1999, and a return of graphite production in the USA in 2002. As of October 16, 2026, Steinberger’s site carries the footer “STEINBERGER is a part of Gibson Brands.”

Steinberger also licensed the design. A 1986 review in International Musician and Recording World says Ned Steinberger licensed his designs to Cort and later Hohner, and that Hohner’s Pro Series G2T guitar and B2A bass used the licensed tuning system, the trademarked body shape and a flip-up leg rest, with a tremolo based on the S-Trem locking system and double-ball strings. The reviewer describes them as Korean instruments. Premier Guitar says Ola Strandberg began building headless guitars after tearing apart a Hohner with a Steinberger-licensed tremolo.

Specifications

The table lists the Steinberger GT-PRO Deluxe guitar and the XT-2DB bass, taken from Steinberger’s own pages on October 16, 2026. Neither page shows a price or a date, so we give neither.

Headless Designs Compared

Strandberg

Strandberg’s own site describes its guitars as headless, says that removes weight and improves balance, and says the company began as a personal effort to solve ergonomic problems. It also lists a patented EndurNeck profile and design work in Uppsala, Sweden. Premier Guitar’s account has Ola Strandberg returning to building in 2007 and early commissions going to Chris Letchford of Scale the Summit, Tosin Abasi and Misha Mansoor.

Kiesel and Carvin

Carvin’s Custom Shop announced the Allan Holdsworth HH series, a compact headless version of his H2 and HF2 Fatboy guitars, in a Premier Guitar item whose dateline reads January 2011 and whose byline reads 2012. The guitars had a chambered alder body, a birch top, a JCustom Headless Research hardtail bridge with fine tuners, an optional XS-Trem tremolo, and a stated weight under 5.5 pounds. Premier Guitar’s 2020 NAMM headline names a Kiesel Delos HD headless, but the page we could read held no specifications.

Ibanez Q Series

Ibanez describes the Q (Quest) series as an entirely new concept for the company, developed from the ground up and not converted from another guitar. The Q54 page lists an Ibanez Mono-Tune bridge, a one-piece custom string lock, a 25.5 in scale and 10.8 mm string spacing, and says no proprietary string is required. Factory strings are D’Addario EXL110. We cover it in our Ibanez Q54 page.

Hohner Licensed Models

The 1986 Hohner Pro Series reviewed above is the licensed route: Steinberger’s tuning, body shape and leg rest on a Korean-built instrument. Premier Guitar’s Strandberg account shows one way these licensed guitars mattered, since Ola Strandberg started from one.

Spirit by Steinberger

The Spirit name began in 1992, per the company timeline, and the Spirit Collection is the line on Steinberger’s site as of October 16, 2026. The site describes it as headless, all-wood, with standard-scale necks and strings anchored at the bridge, and the GT-PRO and XT-2 models in the table above belong to it.

Fender is often mentioned in lists of headless brands. We found no source that supports a Fender headless model, so it is not included.

Who Plays Them

Kobylensky’s history names Allan Holdsworth, Mike Rutherford, Reeves Gabrels, David Rhodes, Eddie Van Halen, Sting and Geddy Lee as Steinberger players. Bass Musician lists Lee, Sting, Tina Weymouth, Tony Levin and Bill Wyman among those who adopted the L-2, and says some players found the sound artificial or synthetic. Guitar.com adds Mark Knopfler, David Bowie, Jerry Garcia, Lou Reed and David Gilmour, a list we have not seen confirmed elsewhere. Kobylensky says Van Halen’s “Summer Nights” on 5150 featured his GL2T built by Jeff Babicz, a detail that comes from a photo caption.

On our own pages, Vito Bratta and Steve Hillage are discussed with Steinberger instruments, and the Johnny Winter guide covers his headless Erlewine Lazer. Those pages carry their own claims, which we have not re-verified for this article.

In the 1990s, Kobylensky says, Paul Masvidal played Steinberger GM and GR models on Death’s Human and Cynic’s Focus, and the dealer Headless USA, run by Donald Greenwald and Jeff Babicz, dealt in vintage Steinbergers. Strandberg’s builds then reached a newer scene. Our guides to Tosin Abasi, Plini and Ichika Nito mention Strandberg instruments.

Steinberger himself said the late-1980s market shifted back toward vintage styles. Hoepfinger writes that the concept was quite successful for almost a decade, and puts most players’ reluctance down to the looks. Our guide to active and high-output humbuckers covers the EMG pickups that became standard on the L-series bass, which its page dates to 1981 on the strength of Premier Guitar’s EMG feature.

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