The Ultimate Headless Guitar & Bass Resource

Replacement Roller Saddles

Improperly functioning roller saddles are one of the primary reasons that most vintage Steinberger tremolos will no longer "return to zero" (proper pitch). Often original saddles can be refurbished, but as some point it makes more sense to replace them with a new set.

Our new Steinberger style roller saddles are of the finest quality materials and design available anywhere. Here at HeadlessUSA, we've been examining and comparing many different versions of these saddles for years, and we found issues and problems with every single one of them. So, once again, we realized that the only solution was to manufacture them ourselves. This way, we could control every aspect of the design, the materials used, and the complete manufacturing process. These roller saddles are superior to any others that we have ever seen. Our head luthier and parts expert, Jeff Babicz, oversaw the entire project, to insure that these roller saddles would be the best quality available, and would perform as well, or better, than the original roller saddles that were installed on all of the new USA-built Steinberger guitars in the 1980's and early 1990's. If you are not familar with Jeff's credentials, view the Steinberger Sound history on his website.

Jeff's over 10 years of experience at Steinberger, and many years as a parts designer and guitar builder gave him the ability to scrutinize every aspect of these roller saddles to ensure that our new models would perform perfectly. Jeff chose only the highest grade materials and engineered all of the dimensions and construction details. One important decision was his use of brass as the roller material. Brass has always been regarded as a "musical metal" so Jeff prefers it to the more common stainless steel rollers that some companies have produced. Another extremely important difference is that Jeff specified that the bodies of the saddles be composed of solid brass. Many of the low quality imports are made of pot metal, which degrades the tone and sustain characteristics of the strings. Granted, solid brass is a more expensive material, but the quality is what really matters. Many of the lower quality imported saddles that we examine also have poor structural designs, and on some, the pins securing the rollers can actually fall out! We also use an extremely hard, black chrome to coat the surface of the saddles bodies. Chrome is highly wear and corrosion resistant, and will last a lifetime under normal use.
We strongly recommend replacing your entire set of roller saddles, so that all of your saddles will perform uniformly.
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