Hey there:
Just picked up this headless Steinberger Spirit guitar. Ok ok… I got it after my dream headless showed up which I love. So why?
Price was scorching deal and major goodies. Very nice seller, had it a long time and hardly played it so figured to move it. It was a bit of drive from any city, and I managed to get it about 5 days after it was posted.
I’ve been curious about the Spirit series. It played very nicely at the seller’s place with extremely low action.
It was listed with case and extra strings. But in fact it had 2 new sets of string plus an opened (used string?) package, PLUS a string adaptor to use any strings not just double ball strings. Yay! Was hoping it was an armored hard case and I’d steal it for my Arbor but in fact it’s a gig bag soft style one that offers less protection than my ukele case that came with the Arbor.
So… a day later I got to sit and play with it. Here’s my thoughts:
The neck is a buzzy mess. Yes, the action is very low, but the most buzzing since I saw that horrible Gibson Explorer E-2 in Florida… Neck is thinner that I thought and thinner than I prefer. Arbor definitely is thicker.
One thing that is great, it’s the tremolo system. Super fun, and working fantastically.
I like the Steinberger licensed bridge / tail / tuner system. It’s working well.
The ‘kickstand’ is great. Sits easily on your leg. No trouble there.
However, if I side by side it to my Arbor, my Arbor headless has more sustain and feels more solid. I also like the Arbor body a lot more – the asymetrical body has really grown on me. And the slightly longer upper rear extension is a much nicer fretting arm rest than the Spirit. Doesn’t look like much but it just fits my body much better. I don’t need the kickstand on the Arbor to play it.
update: In June 2023 my Spirit neck suddenly became a buzzing mess on a shoot. I couldn’t figure out what happened, until I carefully examined it all and saw the neck was bowing up in the middle. Had to make a Truss rod adjustment, BUT truss rod was frozen! I tried very hard to free it without any luck. The most stuck Truss rod I’ve ever seen. I finally had to unscrew the entire headpiece and remove headpiece off the guitar. Then very carefully drop a few drops of oil on top of the truss rod nut. Then I TIGHTENED it ever so slightly and / or put pressure / force on the neck the other direction to release some pressure. It broke free with a huge alarming crack! I removed it completely, cleaned it out and lubed it and re assembled it all. Made the proper adjustment and the guitar plays fantastic again.
Since I guess my circa 2000-2001 Spirit is from the much derided Music Yo… I would still state this is a very nice guitar. I think the main critique is the cheap metal on the Licensed integrated bridge trem system. Although this guitar is great fun to use the trem on, I have since as a precaution flipped the lever under the trem to lock it so it’s a functional hard tail now. Don’t want to bend / break the weak metal posts in there. Of note: my recently purchased Arbor headless is a factory licensed Steinberger hard tail with no trem system so I think it should be more long term reliable (see my post on that guitar).
Here’s a grab from the defunct Music Yo website I got at archive.org
This was the website when it was running in 2001
And here’s another Music Yo ad I found online as well:
