Steinberger (guitars)
Steinberger is an American manufacturer of electric basses and guitars . The company was founded in 1979 by the novel design of Steinberger L known, an electric bass guitar model, which for the first time no headstock had ( english : Headless ) and the most part of a composite material (a carbon fiber - resin - laminate ) was constructed.
Company history
The company was founded by Ned Steinberger (* 1948), son of the American Nobel Prize in Physics, Jack Steinberger . After training as a sculptor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Steinberger started working for the renowned furniture manufacturer Thonet in 1975 , before designing his first electric bass with the Spector NS model the following year . During his time at the US musical instrument manufacturer Spector, Steinberger began experimenting with carbon fiber reinforced plastic, the result of which is the so-called Steinberger blend material.
With the L2 bass he achieved his first big hit in 1979. Its square body, reduced to a minimum, and the instrument neck without headstock with tuning mechanisms attached to the end of the body initially caused amusement at the US music fair NAMM Show in California . Quote from Ned Steinberger: “We took part in the summer NAMM 1980 and were pretty much the laughing stock of the fair.” The ridicule turned into enthusiasm when the bassist Andy West presented the Steinberger bass: “There was one the next day The first three prototypes of the L2 were given to John Entwistle (bassist for the English rock band The Who ), Tony Levin (bassist for King Crimson ) and Andy West ( Dixie Dregs ). sold. The Steinberger Sound company was founded in 1980 . The following year, the L2 bass was the first musical instrument to be selected among the five best designs of the Industrial Designers Excellence Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA) . A year later Steinberger won the Reinforced Plastics / Composite Award from the Society of The Plastics Industry Inc. and brought out his first guitar model with the GL model .
One of Steinberger's developments is the TransTrem : This vibrato system not only allows the string tension (and thus also the pitch) to be raised or lowered, but, unlike other systems, it also enables the entire tuning of the guitar to be transposed. This not only makes playing in different moods easier, but also offers the possibility of so-called chord bends .
Steinberger instruments are characterized by a particularly clear, high-pitched " hi-fi " sound, which results from the hardness of the epoxy resin / graphite material used in combination with the active electronics , and which was not only met with approval: some critics described the sound as "characterless". The GM electric guitar model was developed on the initiative of Mike Rutherford , the guitarist from Genesis . In this case, the minimalist composite material body has been replaced by a traditionally shaped wooden body with side wings. This was especially intended to appeal to guitarists who did not like the radical design of the GL model.
The P-series was developed in order to be able to offer instruments in the middle price segment. Equipped with a wooden body and a screwed neck made of the composite material, but with the same hardware as the L-instruments, it was possible to keep the production costs and thus the price for the end user low. The body shape was a mixture of the L design and the Flying V design by Gibson . Devices of the EMG brand were again installed as electromagnetic pickups . These are offered in two variants on Steinberger instruments: The pickups are equipped with an integrated preamplifier (active electronics) if the company logo is printed or embossed on the lower edge of the pickup housing, they convert the string vibrations passively (without preamplifier) when the EMG -Logo is printed in the middle of the housing cap. The P-Series enjoys a good reputation among fans because they are authentic Steinberger instruments, but with their wooden body they deviate from the concept of hi-fi sound. However, the P-series - there were also electric basses - was not very successful, which is why these instruments were not produced for long and are now available on the second-hand market at significantly lower prices than their predecessors in the L-series.
At the end of the 1980s, the Steinberger company was bought by Gibson, which was not only received positively by lovers of Steinberger instruments. In the mid-1990s, production was completely stopped.
The revival of the Steinberger brand began in 1999 with the inexpensive Steinberger Spirit models, which are made entirely of wood and are therefore very similar to the copies made by the musical instrument manufacturer Hohner, which were very popular in the 1980s . The Steinberger USA Series was reintroduced in 2002 , with a new edition of the GM and GL models, which are sold by the Internet platform MusicYo , a Gibson subsidiary. As with the originals, instrument necks made of composite material are used in the USA models mentioned. However, these instruments cannot be compared with the instruments manufactured until the end of the 1980s, since the body of all models today is made of wood and not of synthetic composite material. The new editions of the GM and GL models are no longer available. The current series for electric guitars and basses consist of the Spirit Collection and the Synapse Collection, and for electric guitars also from the Z-Collection with a new edition of the Trans-Trem (TT3), which is no longer only sold via MusicYo but via the normal musical instrument trade.
Ned Steinberger, who also for the design of the NS Spector records -Basses responsible, dedicated now to the design and production of E-double basses ( Electric Upright basses), cellos and violins .
literature
- Tony Bacon: Guitar classics - all models and manufacturers. Premio Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-86706-050-9 .
- Tony Bacon / Barry Moorhouse: The Bass Book - a complete illustrated history of bass guitars . German edition, Balafon Books, London 1996.
- Dirk Groll: Radical Reduction - Steinberger L2 Bass. Article in electric guitars. ; Special issue of the magazine Guitar & Bass on the history of the electric guitar. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 2004, ISSN 0934-7674 , p. 172 f.
- Jim Roberts: American Basses - an illustrated history and player's guide. Backbeat Books, San Francisco 2003, ISBN 0-87930-721-8 , (English) ..
Web links
- Steinberger company website Flash required (accessed on May 26, 2009)
- Steinberger World - Company history and model overview (accessed on May 26, 2009)