Off
With Their Heads!

So I began to think about these headless guitars. First of all, the name headless; such an odd way to describe something. It evokes images of American folklore, involving ghost riders…always seen from a distance…threatening to hurl a flaming pumpkin at you.

But I suspect the origins of the headless guitar have less to do with ghost stories and more to do with practical things. So let’s see if we can find the source.

The guitar’s traditional form involving a headstock or “peghead," I suppose, was a matter of function; the string tension or pitch must be adjusted in order to tune. The luthier's solution involved a tapered peg with a hole in it, which the guitar string was fed through. The tapered peg was then pushed into a hole, where the pegs’ round, tapered design would allow it to be rotated under tension in order to facilitate tuning the string. The hole in which it was placed was simply a void within a solid piece of wood, strong enough to withhold the demands of the peg under tension. This solid piece of wood that received the peg was named the peghead.

The innovation of the geared tuning machine, eventually replaced tapered pegs, yet the peghead remained a good place to mount thenew metal geared tuners. Since these were acoustic instruments, the thin woods of the body didn’t have the structural integrity to support these new mechanical improvements. Though the peg was made obsolete, the name peghead remained.

Fast-forward to the invention of the solid body guitar in the early twentieth century. These new solid bodies would have allowed for the possibility of mounting hardware somewhere other than the peghead, yet, it remained there for decades more…seemingly unconsidered. Until the late 1970s, when designers like Ned Steinberger reconsidered the electric bass guitar, deeming the peghead unnecessary and moved the tuning machines from the nut end of the strings to the bridge end, a radical innovation at the time.

But how did this come to be? According to Steinberger, he was struggling with the balance of the electric bass. The long neck with large metal machine heads on it was causing the bass’ peghead to dive. Not dramatically, but more like two children of approximate age and size on a playground seesaw. They’re never really equal. One is always a little heavier than the other, all good fun when you want the up and down motion…but it requires effort to keep stationary balance if that’s your intent. A common problem for bass players is often having to hold up their guitar’s neck with their fretting hand while playing; it is not a big deal at first, but it can become quite fatiguing.

Why wasn’t the bass designed with proper balance? Shouldn’t it stay in playing position? The body shape with strap pins were all modern designs…but not designed to stay in position without additional support from the fretting hand?

My personal suspicion is that the bass guitar was not as well considered as the preceding electric guitar. It was simply a larger scale version of its similar-looking, higher-voiced sibling, which is common in design extensions. The first being well considered…the others…well…just think about the balance issues with a number of the most iconic guitars in history. Many of them have silhouettes like a more thoughtfully designed predecessor.

Can’t think of any examples? Let me help you.

Let’s say there’s a guitar maker who’s famous for making hollow body archtop guitars, and now they want to offer a solid body guitar that looks like their already famous guitars…so you re-use your silhouette and transfer most of your design language, i.e. carved top, pickguard, etc.

Or maybe you have a successful electric guitar model, and you want to offer a bass that looks on brand. So you simply make it bigger and longer…You get the point. It’s not unusual, and it happens all the time.

So, we have a balance problem. Steinberger decides that this balance issue could be solved, as all balance issues are. I mean, there are only ever three possibilities, right? Shift the centre of balance, add weight to the light side or remove weight from the heavy side.

So like a nefarious Monarch, Ned decides off with its head!

Well, it probably didn’t happen quite like that…

Did it work? Indeed it did. The scales were righted, and the bass hung in playing position unsupported by the fretting hand.

It wasn’t long before this design was extended to the bass’ little brother, and the first headless guitars came to market.

Then the conversation about balance became one about ergonomics. Balance is but one part of the ideal human interaction with an object…But we’ll have to save that rabbit trail for another day. We’re going to stick with the peghead for now.

So, the tapered peg was eliminated once there was a better way to achieve and maintain string tension. It was a functional improvement that made the experience of playing guitar easier and more enjoyable. And, the invention of solid body electric guitars meant that there were other viable options for mounting the tuning machines.

But is that all there really is to the peghead? Not according to Ken Parker. Like Steinberger, Parker made his name reconsidering the electric guitar with his now infamous Parker Fly Guitars. However, Parker did not choose to eliminate the headstock from his designs, citing the “after-string” as a crucial part of the guitar’s performance.

What’s after-string? It’s the string that exists beyond the nut and saddle. Not often played in a musical composition, but this additional string length does affect the string tension, and to a lesser extent, harmonics (which can be a problem for guitars with a trapeze tailpiece). Parker believes that musicians won’t be willing to adapt to the feel of a guitar without the after string, remembering customers’ negative reactions in the early days of floating tremolo installations back when he was still running a repair shop.

In a recent conversation, Parker recalled a customer’s distress when he played his beloved guitar with the newly installed floating tremolo. Why did it feel so different…what have I done!
This is when they found that simply releasing the locking nut (re-activating the after string) would be enough to make the customer happy with their new modification. So Parker decided a reduced mass peg-head, which keeps the after-string in play, was the way to go with his Parker Fly design. His peghead, which he still employs on his current archtop guitars, has become iconic. Any other guitar maker choosing to use such a minimal peghead, will live with the Parker reference for many years yet.

I’m reminded that innovations are rarely accepted by the existing market. Most have become too accustomed to their playing habits to accept change. Rather, it takes willing musical explorers who are keen to experience new possibilities in order to gain traction for the non-traditional; those who are willing to exchange one set of perceptions for another—stimulated by the new experiences they offer. These experiences lead to new music, and when enough good new music has been made on the evolved instrument, people will be inspired to play that music too.

Don’t believe me? Just look back to theinstruments you love, and think of who made them famous. I suspect you’ll find that they weren’t playing the music of their parents.

These musical explorers are not bothered by the change in the feel of a guitar. They’re inspired by how it changes their approach.

More than four decades after Ned Steinberger made headless guitars famous, a growing number of guitar-playing explorers and guitar makers are embracing this design element.

What does this mean for the future? Will the peghead tuning machine eventually disappear like the tapered peg? Is it possible that the guitar will have its head permanently removed, meandering through American folklore for the rest of time? Who can say? The future can be hard to see… Especially if you’ve lost your head.