Charlie Griffiths of HAKEN, the owner of #53, realized that he didn’t need a tone pot and that he also needed to move the volume pot out of the way – and in place of the old volume put a “blower” switch. This switch sends the bridge pickup in humbucker mode straight to the output jack, bypassing the 5-way switch and volume knob, for a “solo mode”. The switch itself is a push-push switch that simply protrudes out of the top.

Mounting one, however, is not necessarily the most straight-forward operation… What I came up with was a bracket that is wedged in between the top and bottom inside the control cavity, to secure it depth-wise, and that is secured in place by the volume pot + a small screw that holds it in the side.

The hole for the volume pot:

And the switch mounted:

Finally completed:

There are continuous debates on various topics that I am often asked to contribute to with my opinion. I usually decline, because it’s rarely important what my opinion is when it comes to the instruments I produce – it has to be the musician’s opinion that counts. So let’s start by the question “Which tonewood is the best” and just answer it with “The tonewood that gives the musician the sound and feeling he or she is after” and then we can leave it at that.

My son David did a school project about a year ago now, and I have been meaning to publish it for a long time. What prompted me to do so, was stumbling onto a “myth debunking video” the other day, which draws all the wrong conclusions in the name of science.

Here’s what David did:

1. Created four identical test rigs out of scrap wood from my workshop. They are all 725 x 35 x 47 mm in size, and weigh 651 grams (Alder), 618 g (Koa), 537 g (Swamp Ash), and 818 g (Zebrano). They obviously don’t exactly mimic a guitar, but should for the sake of the test resemble the type of tensions and forces that a guitar body with a neck is subjected to.
2. Fitted two .strandberg* bridges, a .046″ low E-string and a .010″ high E-string on a 25.5″ scale, and a Lace Aluma X-bar pickup 125 mm away from the bridge. The same bridge, pickup and strings was used in each test.
3. Created a simple rig to hang a plastic ruler from, to strike the strings with an equal force each time, simulating a pick hitting the string. (As you can hear in the recordings, the pick attack between the samples is somewhat different, but less different than the results, I would argue.)
4. Recorded two sets of samples of each rig on different occasions, to isolate issues with repeatability.
5. Created Fast Fourier Transform snapshots 2 seconds into each clip to provide a visual comparison.

Here’s what what you can hear and see in the video below:

1. A 5 second clip of the low E each on Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano – first recording
2. A 5 second clip of the low E each on Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano – second recording
3. A 5 second clip of the high E each on Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano – first recording
4. A 5 second clip of the high E each on Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano – second recording
5. Alternating first and second recording of the low E and then high E of Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano
6. Alternating first and second recording of the low E of Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano
7. Alternating first and second recording of the high E of Alder, Koa, Swamp Ash, Zebrano

Here’s my intuitive explanation to why we are hearing what we are hearing: What makes a guitar sound like a guitar, as opposed to for example a piano or a harp, is the spectrum of overtones that are generated when the strings are plucked. This also makes two guitars sound different from each other, despite having the same make/model of pickups. Any component that is involved in how the vibrations in the string is created (this is kind of what the myth debunking video refers to as “timbre”, but then goes on to equate to amplitude and frequency, as if the tonewood would alter the notes, as opposed to the tone) affects the sound. For example:

• the string itself: material, gauge, etc.
• how the string is plucked: fingers, nails, plastic pick, stone pick, a coin, etc.
• how the string is anchored in each end, i.e. the characteristics of the bridge, the nut/fret materials, and even if there is a headstock, and so on.
• the properties of the material that holds the anchors of each end of the string apart, i.e the density, stiffness, and so on of the body and neck materials.

Note how the FFT images are composed of a whole variety of frequencies in the video above. Here is one with just a single curve for simplicity:

In the image above, the first higher peak we see is E4 (i.e. the low E-string on a guitar in standard tuning), the second peak is E5 (i.e. an octave higher) and the following high peaks are B5, E6, G#6, B6, D7, and so on. Remember that the test rigs only have two strings, both tuned to E, and plucked open. So what you are hearing is a mish-mash of tons of overtones that shape the character of the “tone” that you hear.

The pickups on an electric guitar can only pick up the vibrations of the string and convert those vibrations into electricity, which is ultimately converted into sound waves that emanate from the speakers. Do the pickups shape the sound? Of course! Can pickups mask the characteristics and make two electric guitars with different tonewoods sound the same? Yes again. So, I guess the correct answer to the question if wood makes a difference in the sound of an electric guitar is “It depends”. A pickup that can’t pick up these subtle overtone differences, enough compression, or other kinds of dynamics-killing processing, will kill the dynamics of any guitar, regardless of tonewood. Does that make it a bad guitar? Not necessarily – it depends on what the musician is after.

A good guitar builder can pick materials that provide a predictable result. The process of making a <insert established brand name here> guitar that costs $10,000 and one that costs $1,000 is identical, or at least very similar. The big difference is likely that in the more expensive one, personal attention has been put into selecting, drying, storing, and cutting the tonewood. The cheaper, which is mass produced by less skilled labor, consists of the same species of wood, but from a pile that came out of a container, in the order it was stacked. This means that two guitars from the same batch can sound quite different. They can sound exactly like the expensive guitar, but they can also sound different.

Manufacturing techniques can alter the impact of the variability of other factors. A .strandberg* guitar is made from lightweight but stiff materials. The neck is reinforced with carbon fiber. Each string rests on its own bridge that does not transfer vibrations to the other strings in the same way as a conventional guitar bridge. The bridges themselves are made from light and stiff aircraft aluminium instead of brass or steel as is commonplace. Each component is tightly coupled to the next with no room to vibrate. Regardless of tonewood, your .strandberg* will sound clear, airy, organic, dynamic, and respond quickly to the plucking of strings with a great dynamic range – as a result of the construction itself. The characteristics of different woods and pickups are transferred more effectively than might otherwise be the case. Is this better? Again, it depends on what the musician is after… I’ve come across for example ES-335 players that are intimidated by the responsiveness and dynamics and who become inhibited and self conscious when picking up a .strandberg*. But for most, it’s a pleasant experience that liberates their tone.

Add to this the physical attributes and ergonomics of a .strandberg* that work together to relax muscles, joints and tendons when playing. Some players are freaked out by the low weight, others by the lack of headstock and some have a natural playing position that places their thumb right at the edge of the EndurNeck™ and is not comfortable at all.

You have to judge for yourself.

Feel better – Sound better.

I handed in my resignation at the day job a couple of days ago, so here starts the next phase of Strandberg Guitars! As I’m writing this, I just arrived in Anaheim, where I’m exhibiting at the NAMM Show for the fifth consecutive year. A lot has happened the past seven years, since the original idea for what is now .strandberg* was hatched. What allowed me to confidently make the decision to leave the security of my well paid (and even fun!) day job was that there is now a sustainable and well functioning organization and delivery capacity, which has been built the past several years. In particular, I’m very happy to finally present the Swedish contingent.

From left to right:

Erik is with us temporarily as an apprentice, taking a break from touring life with his band Casablanca, previously having toured with Bullit and supporting the likes of major Swedish artist Dregen on the road.

Besides having a degree in music from Ingesund/Arvika and being an amazing bass player, Pelle has made his living repairing guitars and building guitars by hand for more than 10 years.

Yours truly, Ola. I started building guitars in 1982 after reading an article in Guitar Player Magazine about the process of Allan Holdsworth getting prototypes made by Grover Jackson. It dawned on me that “I could do that”. [Editor's note: it is mind-boggling to now have built a guitar for Allan Holdsworth more than 30 years later!] The current incarnation of the business was founded in 2007, and you can read all about it by following the older blog posts on this site.

Leif and I met on the Frankfurt subway, returning back from Musikmesse 2013. The “Swedish way” of behaving on public transport is to stay as far away as possible from anyone else, so the odds of two Swedes happening to cross paths and opening up a conversation in a city like Frankfurt are pretty slim. For some reason, we did, and for the past year or so, we have been training, planning, and refining processes. And it’s not enough that it was two Swedes opening up a conversation, I would also argue that these two Swedes make up a very high percentage of the population with the particular skill set required for guitar production, with Leif having a background with major guitar brands and implementing and supporting advanced CNC production.

There are now three paths to getting a .strandberg*:

1. Made to Measure – one-on-one conversation with me to create your unique specifications, based on ergonomics and sound. Your guitar is built 100% in Sweden by me and the team, is prominently engraved with the build number, and you receive a personalized Certificate of Authenticity, signed by me. Getting a Made to Measure guitar is subject to wait list and the specification process is done on-line and via e-mail.
2. US Custom Shop – within the limits of pre-defined overall specifications, such as scale length, you can choose materials, finish and pickups, to adapt the sonic characteristics to your needs. The specs for the available models are taken from the Made-to-Measure guitars of amazing players such as Tosin Abasi and Misha Mansoor. In particular, our Signature Models feature the specifications of Chris Letchford, Paul Masvidal and Per Nilsson. Your guitar is built 100% in the US by the Washburn Custom Shop at US Music, and you receive a (personalized if you purchase directly from our web shop) Certificate of Authenticity. Specification and purchase is easy through our website, and current wait time is 2-3 months.
3. Production – the new Boden OS line premiers with the 7-string version at this year’s NAMM Show. The Boden OS 6 will be available in the coming months. These guitars are built to fixed specifications by World Musical Instruments in Korea. QC inspection and setup is done in the US by Strandberg trained personnel. When you purchase from our web shop, they normally ship within a week, as long as they are in stock. Boden OS guitars will also be available through dealers going forward.

Getting to this point has been quite a journey and an evolution over several iterations. I have been contemplating writing a blog post trying to detail the challenges of making guitar building into a business, but am not sure of much of a general interest it would be (let me know if you want to hear about it). Furthermore, it seems that as soon as I think I have overcome my challenges, a new one appears, so such an article would be both very personal and probably outdated by the time it appears! Some of it is described in a lecture I did at Parsons the New School for Design last year.

Guitar making is not rocket science. I would argue that it is actually more complex in many ways, the two big reasons being:

1. You are trying to meet a very subjectively and emotionally formulated customer need – it is simply not possible to quantify the exact properties you want and then prove that you delivered them.
2. You are working with raw materials (most of us, at least) that are alive and in a constant flux. Even two boards out of the same log will result in instruments with different properties – which will also vary over time!

Many are very successful in navigating the two issues above by being passionate, empathic, understanding music and tone, and applying good craftsmanship. But when scaling it up, there are numerous issues that meet every small business owner, such as just responding to e-mail, keeping up on social media, monitoring finances and administration, packing and shipping, and much more that comes with success. Prioritizing these matters is rarely intuitive, but something that requires experience and (repeated) recovery from failures. Ideally, one can utilize the experience of others and learn more quickly. I recently learned that a well respected guitar brand that I have been looking up to has been making hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses annually for many years and risks being retired completely, so I wouldn’t say there are many encouraging examples.

Building my capacity in the USA and Korea is a direct consequence of this: it is there that I have found the needed experience and competence. What makes the Washburn Custom Shop and World Musical Instruments fairly unique in this business is that they have experience with innovation and pushing the envelope, an open mind, but more importantly: they have a leadership that understands that making musical instruments is about making music in the end, and not about assembling pieces of wood and attaching strings in an attractive package. I honestly did not expect to find this in Sweden, so bumping into Leif was an amazing coincidence, and I can now with confidence say that we are building a solid operation also in Sweden.

We look forward to supplying your next guitar!

As I was digging through piles of handwritten notes – some written on both sides of a sheet of paper, many without description what the actual schematic did – to find a starting point for a schematic, I decided to make a serious effort to retain documented schematics for posterity.

From a Google search, I found the free software DIY Layout Creator (diylc.org), which turned out to work really well. Apparently, it is a favorite among stompbox builders. (Note that on MacOS X , you get a random error message trying to run it, and you have to allow running apps downloaded from “Anywhere” in order for it to work.)

Here is the schematic for #61, which is an HSH guitar with two three-position mini toggles that switch the humbuckers into series/parallel/split (outer coil) mode, and combines the humbuckers with the middle pickup in position 2 and 4 of a 5-way blade switch.

Enjoy!

And the link to the DIYLC project file. Feel free to enhance, correct, and share.

While I’m at it with schematics, here is the one for #65, which is a little more interesting. It has a Lundgren humbucker in the bridge, and Bare Knuckle single coil in the neck, and switches through combinations of the different humbucker coils in combination with the single coil using a 5-way switch.

And the DIYLC file. Again, this may be modified and shared under Creative Commons license.

Over here at the Strandberg headquarters, Sunday is turning into play day. Leaving the day job turned weekdays into work days, and as all of you on the waiting list and build schedule know, there is a lot going on. But it’s great to be able to free up a little time for new development!

I have been planning a bass since 2012. The design was done, and the prototype hardware was manufactured at that time. However, things do seem to stack up and get in the way. I had 9 pcs of hardware made, and in a weak moment, I sold 5 pcs to the amazing bass builder Alex Watson. At this time, I really wish I hadn’t, because the prospect of making the first .strandberg* bass a 4-string hurts. But it might be a blessing in disguise, because if it doesn’t work, at least I know it’s not because it has too many strings.

More information will follow shortly, but for now, I’m facing a lot of design decisions. The prototype will share the same materials as the first Varberg prototype guitar: Macassar Ebony top, Swamp Ash core and Mahogany back, with a Rosewood neck and Ebony fretboard. The pickups I purchased back then are Lace Alumitone Jazz bass and Precision bass pickups.

I’m not really keen on changing those overall specs, but will gladly take input now on scale lengths and string spacings, etc. The sketch you see has 33″ – 34.5″ scale length and 19 mm spacing at the bridge, and roughly 9.5 mm at the nut (Jazz bass measurements).

Zero frets have an awesome property: they allow open strings to sound as close to fretted strings as possible. In addition, there is no guess work in cutting nut slots, etc. All in all, they just make perfect sense. When it comes to .strandberg* guitars, the 0-fret serves a secondary purpose as well: namely that it provides string ground for the remaining strings after only the high E has been grounded. One drawback, however, is that it can wear out over time since the string is always resting against it. The more the string can move across it during play, the quicker it will wear out. The original design intent for the EGS hardware was to simply fasten the strings in the string locks and let them pass over the 0-fret, but with fanned fret deployments, the string locks don’t line up at the correct spacing. So to provide this, and also to minimize the possible movement, a correctly cut “nut”, or “spacer”, is needed.

Now that we have guitars in serial production, it is no longer feasible to hand-cut nuts, as we have always done. We need an outside vendor to produce them in quantities and at a decent price. But the vendors out there are not used to cutting nuts for fanned fret guitars, and it is indeed tricky to do with conventional techniques. The obvious solution is to injection mould nuts. But this requires creating a mould, and unless you make nuts in quantities of 1,000+, the nuts become very expensive. And if a re-design is called for, facing a new mould investment can be a strong deterrent.

So a few weeks ago, I hatched the obvious idea to 3D-print nuts! The intent was to model a perfect nut with rounded corners, surfaces with the correct release angles, etc., to replace the 0-fret as well.

The prototypes came out good enough, but unfortunately, the plastic used just isn’t hard enough. The sound of the open string was not at all as good as one would want. So we’re back to the drawing board – the plan is to continue to use a 0-fret in combination with a 3D-printed spacer, which will give us the best of two worlds.

AND: as a an added fun benefit, you will be able to order your own nuts in a large variety of colors and materials!

Well, if it works. The second round of prototypes have been ordered.

The Lace Alumitone™ pickups, like the X-Bar, which we use extensively, is based on a non-conventional technology (which we will not go into here) that provides noise- and hum-free high definition full range sound in a beautiful and lightweight package.

They don’t consist of two separate hum canceling bobbins like a humbucker, so when wiring them, there are less options. The option that they do provide is a “split” which is more similar to a coil tap, but it is again not a conventional coil tap because it does its magic without a dramatic loss in signal. But it changes the voicing of the pickup in a very nice way.

Connecting one of these pickups, using the split option, can be confusing because rather than shorting out one of the bobbins or part of the coil, you actually choose a different ground but leave the hot (signal) wire alone. For a humbucker sound, connect the white/black cable to ground and leave the white cable disconnected and for the single coil sound, connect the white cable to ground and leave the white/black disconnected. (Leaving the white cable completely disconnected is important – resist the temptation to connect it to the other white cable, or shorting it to ground.)

Here is a diagram on how to use a 4-pole 5-way switch (aka “Superswitch”) to obtain split sounds in position 2 and 4. Enjoy! (Note that the white/black cable on the pickup is depicted as black in the diagram. The very nice and free software DIYLC was used to create the diagram.)

People have been asking for a fanned fret tremolo for years, and I have spent many cycles designing the ultimate modular tremolo, which will scale just like the regular hardware and can be used for any number of strings, and scale length relationship, etc. The really difficult part was cracking how to make the tremolo modular, but still possible to affect all the strings at once with a single arm. As amazing as the Tremologic™ invention is, most people expect a tremolo to behave in the “normal” way. We do need a little more time to figure out if it actually works though.

The scores of people who have asked if they can put a tremolo on the regular Boden guitars have been brushed away with “No, a conventional tremolo with a single fulcrum point doesn’t work with fanned frets”, but I never actually analyzed it. The reason for assuming it would not work well is that the lower strings end up far away from the pivot point and are affected with more of an up-down motion than a back-forth motion that causes the tremolo effect.

However, as it turns out, the effect is quite similar. First, here is the regular tremolo, in its balance position:

And rotated 5 degrees:

And the fanned fret version, with the first string pushed forward and the sixth pulled back:

And rotated 5 degrees:

As you can see, the movement in the string’s direction is roughly the same for both!

So, I went to work and “hacked” a tremolo and my personal Boden OS 6 demo guitar.

And the results are quite impressive! Here’s a fairly technical demo – we hope to follow up with a more musical one in the near future.

This post is a re-print of our newsletter sent out on 29th of May, 2015.

It is with a great deal of excitement but a tinge of sadness that we announce that the .strandberg* Custom Shop is moving back to its roots in Sweden.

Co-locating the Custom Shop with the Made to Measure manufacturing will allow us to leverage the economy of scale in both lines of production, and deliver better guitars faster than otherwise. We will also be adding some new options to the Custom Shop guitars in the coming weeks, such as choice of humbucker or soapbar route, control layout and choice of switch type, thereby decreasing the gap between Custom Shop and Made to Measure.

The Washburn Custom Shop (operated by US Music) has been an amazing partner the past few years. Beyond just building our guitars, they have provided technical support to customers, product photography, as well as shipping services. The competence that resides within those four walls in Buffalo Grove, IL, will not be easily replaced and will be sorely missed. We would have loved to continue our relationship with them, but sadly they have decided to cease production due to economic factors.

The intent is for the move to be completely transparent to customers. Since the Made to Measure shop knows these guitars intimately, there is no training at all involved. We have already secured new shop space and look forward to showing it to you soon.

The web shop will continue to be priced in USD for strandbergguitars.com and EUR including VAT for strandbergguitars.eu. The prices for the .com shop will be quoted including domestic US shipping, and the guitars destined for North America will be brought through customs and quality controlled by our center in Southern California that is already managing the Boden OS operations. At this time, we do not anticipate any changes in pricing, although we may alter some of the available options.

We are currently working out how to manage the warranty obligations with US Music with the firm intent that no customer will be impacted, at least not in a negative way. Orders placed from today will be placed with the Swedish shop and fulfilled from there.

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that I have chosen to suspend the sales of hardware and EndurNeck™ licenses as of today 27 September 2015. This is NOT for protectionistic reasons, or even because of abuse, but simply because I am in a phase of building the company that I need to prioritize everything that I do.

Strandberg Guitars was founded on a platform of openness and sharing, which hasn’t changed one bit. But, I will any day rather do a few things well than many things poorly, and I simply don’t have the time to support those of you that have questions about the hardware or licenses at the moment, or even to pack things up for shipping. Once a few more milestones have been cleared, and I have the staff and process to manage these things in a good way, sales will open up again.

I would ask for your kind understanding, and also ask that you don’t e-mail and ask when they will be available again, as responding to those kinds of questions is the exact reason we have suspended the sales.

If you have already purchased an EndurNeck™ license and/or information kit, I would kindly ask that you refrain from using it to build more necks until the sales resume, or share the information kit with others. Each neck should be marked with the serial number label you receive with the license, and we are not able to send out labels at this time.

Thanks for your understanding and patience!
Ola