your thoughts on steinberger guitars?

  • Thread starter Thread starter AlfredB
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AlfredB

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I am tallking about the older (US) made ones


any experience? are they a genius´ work or are they just smoke blowing up our a$$?

thx
 
Honestly, I can't make it past the appearance of those things. Shallow, I know...but seriously, they just look stupid.

I played a friend's Steinberger many years ago and really didn't see a big difference in its "stayintunablity".
 
Purge said:
Honestly, I can't make it past the appearance of those things. Shallow, I know...but seriously, they just look stupid.
Click to expand...

I'll second this statement. For some reason I can't help but laugh when I see someone playing one of these things, they just look soooo gay. I did try one some years back, but I can't remember how it played. Cause like Purge, I couldn't see past its appearance.
 
The same as my thoughts on leg warmers and spandex!
 
looks like its unanimous... they are some ugly looking guitars!


and the few I've played felt WIERD. I for one do not like them
 
I could be wrong about this, but they look like they wouldn't balance well at all, without a headstock they'd probably be really body-heavy.
 
The original basses were great sounding, stayed in tune through a hurricane, and sit great in a mix/live.................but yeah, theyre pretty gay looking(not that theres anything wrong w/ that!). Asthetically, I think I would rather be seen w/ a key-tar(doh) than a steinbass.

Overall a very inovative guitar company. They advertised a guitar a few years ago which you could program alternative tuning and switch it on the fly w/ one touch. Crazy cool sounding, but never got to see one in person.
 
My buddy plays the model thats a guitar and a bass all on one guitar body. As stupid as it looks, it sounds great and doesn't feel bad at all to play. Another guy in the same band has one of the cheaper just stock guitars (no clue of the model) I didn't really think it played all that great. It sounds pretty good though and the tuning holds alot better when doing whammy bar type stuff than most of the lower line ibanez's ive played.
 
I've never played a "real" one, but I bought a Hohner model that they licensed from Steinberger in the late eighties. I got it so I could have a compact travel guitar to take with me on the plane.

I still have it. It's not my favorite guitar, but it sounds very good, balances perfectly well, plays like a dream, and stays on tune very well. I think they look pretty cool too. I've got a live video I shot about two years ago where I used one onstage through a POD into the PA, improvising over some loops...



The hardest thing to get used to is glancing over towards your fretting hand while you play and having the double-take feeling because your hand position, relative to the end of the neck, seems wrong because of the "missing" headstock that your brain expects to be seeing.

The TransTrem some of the 'real" Steinbergers have is cool and works well, I've seen David Torn use it with his Cloud About Mercury band in the eighties.
 
Bill Wyman used to play a bass one - he said the biggest problem was that it gave him nowhere to put his cigarette. So they glued the barrel from a ball point pen to the end of the neck, so he'd have somewhere to stow his smoke ;)
 
I owned one of the original high end Steinbergers (GM4T) for 13 years. Bought it for $1300 new, and sold it for the same amount 13 years later on eBay.

They are fabulous guitars. The most stable neck you'll ever find (graphite). Sustain through next week. The tuning and intonation, once set up, are impecible. The bridge tuners used a worm gear and operated extremely well.
The trans trem bridge allows you to bend entire chords without the chord sounding out of tune as the bed increases. My guitar was very well balanced and very easy on the neck.

Ned Steiberger was indeed a genius.

The only reason I sold mine was that after 13 years it needed a fret job and at that time the only guy who had Steinberger parts was Ed Roman. No way I'd deal with that prick.
 
I've played one of their guitars before. It has a real odd feel to it, but then again that takes some getting used to. Aside from the weird feel of it, it seemed to play nicer than alot of guitars I've played. I'd imagine these guitars have incredible sustain.
 
These are nice guitars for pop music sort of strummy music. You could see guys playing these behind Kenny Rogers.
 
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