Had one of these in trans grey/black I posted a few years back. Was still experimenting with different guitars at the time, so I let it go foolishly.
In the time since, the market kinda dried up on these. They don't pop up often and when they do, they're an arm and a leg. Wasn't necessarily in the market for one but this popped up needed some TLC, and it was all stuff I could handle so I decided to pick it up.
Main issues out of the box: TransTrem didn't work, one pickup was dead, lots of scratch/grime/scuffs, and the kickstand just flopped loose. Oh, and the frets were full of flat/dead spots.
Fixed a lot of the issues just with a thorough cleaning and polishing. The TransTrem luckily had no missing or broken components, it was just WAY out of adjustment and the poor condition led the previous owner to just permanently lock it. After cleaning, oiling and installing a set of double ball strings, it now is 100% functional.
Pickups were stock. Someone definitely got inside of this and played around. I eventually concluded the neck pickup was dead-dead (after disassembly, discovered a short in one of the coils). I'm going to assume they tried to fix/troubleshoot the neck pickup issue and gave up.
Decided a proper Steinberger should have an EMG set, so I went with a 57/66 set in brushed black nickel. These seemed to match the color scheme of the guitar and blended with the black hardware well enough to suit me. I LOVE these pickups. I've always been a 85, 89 and SA guy (meh to the 81) but these are a nice next step. They feel a little hotter with more beef than the 85 but they're not as nasally, chainsawy like the 81. Might be my new favorite pickup.
The body needed some routing to clear the new pickups. Length and width were fine but the corner radius was too large for the covered dimensions of the the EMGs. I checked the body up in the CNC and routed mostly just the corners a pinch to get these in.
Kickstand was a mess. I almost gave up on it and was going to just lock it in place or remove it. They used a kinda bent steel roll pin to lock the kickstand down/up. The pin was worn out bad, as were all the contact points so nothing would hold no matter how I reshaped it. Last attempt was to bore out the hole to clean up the edges, and I installed a slightly oversized tension pin. *That* happened to work like a charm.
Frets were either well loved or it was sitting with something on top of it forever because the frets were all smushy right under each string. The fretboard was also dirty and covered with green finger cheese. Thoroughly scrubbed the board, then leveled and recrowned it. Plays beautifully now. One nice thing about these, while I miss the solid graphite neck of the GL/GM series.. the graphite U channel on these is VERY stable. Guitar is 20 years old and seen a hard life and I was still able to adjust the neck to straight as an arrow with a quarter twist.
I love this thing. This one joins the forever club (for now
).
In the time since, the market kinda dried up on these. They don't pop up often and when they do, they're an arm and a leg. Wasn't necessarily in the market for one but this popped up needed some TLC, and it was all stuff I could handle so I decided to pick it up.
Main issues out of the box: TransTrem didn't work, one pickup was dead, lots of scratch/grime/scuffs, and the kickstand just flopped loose. Oh, and the frets were full of flat/dead spots.
Fixed a lot of the issues just with a thorough cleaning and polishing. The TransTrem luckily had no missing or broken components, it was just WAY out of adjustment and the poor condition led the previous owner to just permanently lock it. After cleaning, oiling and installing a set of double ball strings, it now is 100% functional.
Pickups were stock. Someone definitely got inside of this and played around. I eventually concluded the neck pickup was dead-dead (after disassembly, discovered a short in one of the coils). I'm going to assume they tried to fix/troubleshoot the neck pickup issue and gave up.
Decided a proper Steinberger should have an EMG set, so I went with a 57/66 set in brushed black nickel. These seemed to match the color scheme of the guitar and blended with the black hardware well enough to suit me. I LOVE these pickups. I've always been a 85, 89 and SA guy (meh to the 81) but these are a nice next step. They feel a little hotter with more beef than the 85 but they're not as nasally, chainsawy like the 81. Might be my new favorite pickup.
The body needed some routing to clear the new pickups. Length and width were fine but the corner radius was too large for the covered dimensions of the the EMGs. I checked the body up in the CNC and routed mostly just the corners a pinch to get these in.
Kickstand was a mess. I almost gave up on it and was going to just lock it in place or remove it. They used a kinda bent steel roll pin to lock the kickstand down/up. The pin was worn out bad, as were all the contact points so nothing would hold no matter how I reshaped it. Last attempt was to bore out the hole to clean up the edges, and I installed a slightly oversized tension pin. *That* happened to work like a charm.
Frets were either well loved or it was sitting with something on top of it forever because the frets were all smushy right under each string. The fretboard was also dirty and covered with green finger cheese. Thoroughly scrubbed the board, then leveled and recrowned it. Plays beautifully now. One nice thing about these, while I miss the solid graphite neck of the GL/GM series.. the graphite U channel on these is VERY stable. Guitar is 20 years old and seen a hard life and I was still able to adjust the neck to straight as an arrow with a quarter twist.
I love this thing. This one joins the forever club (for now
).
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