Innovation Week: Every guitarist with a Tune-O-Matic and stopbar tailpiece setup knows the ritual. Feed the string through the bar, over the bridge, up the neck, then wind three full wraps around the tuning post and wait for the thing to settle down over the next few hours of playing.
Steadfast Designs looked at that ritual and decided to run it in reverse. Its debut product, the Steadfast Stopbar, is a patented aluminum tailpiece that locks the ball end of the string at the tuning post and clamps the other end at the tailpiece with a small set screw.
Pull each string tight, then secure it with the supplied hex driver. It’s a mechanical flip, but one aimed squarely at anyone who has ever dreaded restringing the day before a gig.
By anchoring both ends of the string instead of relying on friction and wraps around a post, the company claims you get tuning stability quickly after restringing, along with a restring that takes a fraction of the usual time.
Stability is improved by eliminating the wraps of string that can settle around the posts. You still need to stretch the strings and retune, as the company’s own instructions point out, but you arrive at stable tuning much faster. For touring players and guitar techs, that difference alone could be worth the upgrade.
The stopbar is CNC-machined in the USA from solid billet aircraft grade aluminum rather than the die cast zinc most factory stopbars are made from, and it shows on the scale. The Steadfast bar weighs in at 37 grams against roughly 88 grams for a typical Gibson zinc unit.
Less mass moving around under string tension means that more vibration reaches the guitar body rather than getting soaked up by the hardware, according to Steadfast. This contributes to better sustain and a clearer top-end.
Steadfast has also hinted at future titanium and stainless steel versions for players chasing even more sustain. Tone arguments involving guitar hardware are almost always subjective, so you’ll have to hear this with your own ears.
Installation is easy – it’s a drop-in replacement with no drilling required. Steadfast says it fits the vast majority of Tune-O Matic guitars from Gibson, Epiphone, Gretsch, ESP, Ibanez, Schecter and plenty of others, in both US and metric post spacing.
Prices run from $99 for a faded finish model up to $169 for a 24k gold plated Custom model. The company backs it with a limited lifetime guarantee.
Steadfast joins a crowded field of stopbar variations – the top-wrap-friendly Lightning Bar, for one – with an idea that’s worth trying for yourself. The question now is whether guitarists will warm to its backwards approach enough to make it a keeper.
- For more info, head to Steadfast Stopbar.
