Thanks to Lewis, from Torbay Guitar Repairs, I’ve just rediscovered JCustom Headless Research guitar & bass hardware. A recent blog post of his details the work he did on a customer’s beautiful, custom made bass. Completely hand crafted, the customer made the bass as a gift for his daughter. What I thought was most interesting about the instrument was that it is using a JCustom 4 String bridge with the Drop D Toggle (pictured below).
About JCustom
All of the JCustom parts are designed to replace the original hardware used on USA made Steinberger guitars & basses from the 80’s and 90’s. However, it’s on custom builds that I’ve mainly seen their hardware used. Whether that’s simply because I haven’t noticed them on Steinbergers, I’m not too sure.
All of the parts are designed and manufactured in Korea by a company called Headless Research, with the sole distributor being Headless USA. They definitely aren’t cheap; the 4 String Bass Bridge for example retails for $349!
Interestingly, Don from Headless USA is regularly in contact with both Jeffs from Babicz FCH. (If you aren’t familiar with Full Contact Hardware, you can find out more about them HERE). Jeff Babicz and Jeff Carano were the executive management team for Steinberger in the 1980’s and early ’90’s.
Have a look through their catalogue and let me know what you think. Would you consider using them yourself? If you are a Steinberger owner, do these look like quality replacements to you?
I’m not going to write these parts off straight away; although small, I’d say there is definitely a market for Steinberger replacements, but it’s the custom builds that I’m most interested in. There is already a lot of headless gear available for builders (ABM, Hipshot, etc) so is there room for JCustom headless parts too? Possibly. What I can say it that there is definitely no one else stocking them over here in the UK! An opportunity maybe? Again, possibly.
Alex
BTN Music
Torbay Guitar Repairs – For setups and repairs
