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Why Headless??

I was Just wondering why headless necks? the tuners are just at the other end. does it effect tone? or how you play it..or just a look??

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Permalink Reply by Josh Gayou (SmokehouseGuitars) on May 7, 2010 at 2:22am

A six string CBG is heavy as hell in the neck if you don't make it a true solid body. Putting tuners down at the body would go a long way toward alleviating that. I have to imagine that this is the reason they do it on a Steinberger. The bodies on those things are so small to begin with.

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Permalink Reply by Vagabanjo on February 16, 2014 at 12:45am

Hi,

I built this a few years ago, I wanted a headless because I got fed up of knocking the tuners and having to retune, plus easily transportable. I had to use a wheel system for the strings to go around into the body, and I uses a fork for the head, plus the fifth is just a small hole with a screw to hold the string.

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Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on February 16, 2014 at 1:35am

Cool Banjo! I like it!

The strings are routed to the tuners in a manner similar to Laranor's solid body headless guitar. Here's a photo of that.

I have also been thinking the banjo's 5th string can be handled the same way with a headless design and all the tuners in the box.

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Permalink Reply by Vagabanjo on February 16, 2014 at 12:49am

here is the fifth setup

here is the fork head

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Permalink Reply by Chuck Dubman on March 13, 2014 at 11:30am

Shifts the center of gravity toward the body, letting your left hand concentrate on playing instead of supporting the instrument. With a featherweight CBG, it's more of a hypothetical benefit.

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Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on March 20, 2014 at 3:59pm

Hi All,

I was inspired by some of the photos in this thread to build my own headless 3-string stick dulcimer using a design not that different than the ones used by Fergus Morris and Tracey Kennedy. Tracey's method (which tries to eliminate the "big hole" on the tail side of the sound box) turns out to be rather difficult, so I ended up cutting a big hole to make mounting the tuners much simpler. Here are some photos...
Specs: LOA = 22.5", VSL = 18"