Steinberger is a maker of musical instruments. Staring in the 70′s, Ned Steinberger made some pretty funky stuff, possibly the niftiest being the ability to tune the instrument once, then use a ‘TransTrem” bar (like a wammy bar) to pitch-bend all of the strings at the same time. (see here for more details) Over the years, the company was purchased by Gibson, and parts for some of the older guitars became scarce. The TransTrem is a necessarily complex mechanism that operates under tension, balanced by a good sized spring and the strings of the guitar. There’s a particular piece that holds it all together. It’s cast aluminum. It’s been known to fail. Replacement pieces are getting harder and harder to find.
I was over at a friend’s house and the topic of conversation drifted to the guitars he had disassembled on the dining room table. He relayed the story, and showed me the part. This little voice in the back of my head said ‘I can build that!’
I asked him about it and he mentioned he had blueprints for the part and that he’d email them to me. The coolest thing about having a metalshop in the garage is making bits and pieces like this. The second coolest thing about having a metalshop in the garage is: Once you make one, making more is pretty easy! The first part took about 2 hours to make, each additional part takes about 12 minutes now. Since McMaster-Carr sells the steel I needed in 3 foot lengths, and these parts are about half an inch long, I’ll be making quite a few. And since _I’m_ not cost-constrained, I can make the part out of steel rather than pot-cast-aluminum.
I can’t help but think the world is FULL of little broken bits and pieces. Pieces that aren’t all that hard to make, but since it’s cost prohibitive for a factory to make them by the 10′s and 100′s, tools go unused, music goes un-played, and things get needlessly thrown out. I’m pretty happy to make 10 of something here, 20 of something there…any more than that and it’d start to seem like a job. I already have one of those.
