Hi everyone,
I recently bought a Steinberger Synapse 4 string bass in perfect condition except for a broken clamp on the headpiece, the original owner told me he broke it the very first time he tried to use regular strings! This is a well-documented problem of the Synapse basses and guitars (along with the well-known truss rod issues), but there are many musicians who only use double-ball end strings with this bass and other who are successfully using these single ball string adapters with no issues.
I'm using double-ball end strings with no problem, but I really wanted to have an adapter to use regular strings as an alternative to the double-ball end sets with a much wider choice of gauges and materials.
I contacted various Synapse users through this and other forums and some dealers, but I didn't have any satisfying reply to solve the problem, so I found my own solution, cheap and rather quick to apply, and want to share it with anyone having the same problem.
Here is a picture of the original Synapse headpiece, clamp inserts and screws:
The inserts are made with a rather delicate alloy and shatter under the screw pressure, like in this case:
Here is a picture of the headpiece with the inserts removed, top and bottom sides:
Gibson/Steinberger never sold replacement inserts for this headpiece, just the complete set, but as many of you know these spare parts are almost impossible to find.
I decided to replace the broken clamps with some new ones, adapting them to the headpiece body size. The best ones are the motorcyle throttle cable clamps, that exist in various sizes. The original clamp inserts have a diameter of 7mm, but the closest available size I found was 8mm. I also bought some hex screws to be cut to the exact size wanted.
The clamp bodies were reduced in size to a diameter of approx.7mm in order to insert them tighly into the headpiece body
View from the bottom
The clamps were secured with a drop of superglue, although they are tight enough to stay in that position.
The hexagonal head screws were cut to different lengths, so when the strings are on the bass they have all the same height, here is the final result
The work was rather easy to finish in approx.3 hours with no particular tools, just a Dremel used to cut and smooth the parts. The cost of the bike clamps and screws was just a few Euros.
Thanks
Augusto
I recently bought a Steinberger Synapse 4 string bass in perfect condition except for a broken clamp on the headpiece, the original owner told me he broke it the very first time he tried to use regular strings! This is a well-documented problem of the Synapse basses and guitars (along with the well-known truss rod issues), but there are many musicians who only use double-ball end strings with this bass and other who are successfully using these single ball string adapters with no issues.
I'm using double-ball end strings with no problem, but I really wanted to have an adapter to use regular strings as an alternative to the double-ball end sets with a much wider choice of gauges and materials.
I contacted various Synapse users through this and other forums and some dealers, but I didn't have any satisfying reply to solve the problem, so I found my own solution, cheap and rather quick to apply, and want to share it with anyone having the same problem.
Here is a picture of the original Synapse headpiece, clamp inserts and screws:
The inserts are made with a rather delicate alloy and shatter under the screw pressure, like in this case:
Here is a picture of the headpiece with the inserts removed, top and bottom sides:
Gibson/Steinberger never sold replacement inserts for this headpiece, just the complete set, but as many of you know these spare parts are almost impossible to find.
I decided to replace the broken clamps with some new ones, adapting them to the headpiece body size. The best ones are the motorcyle throttle cable clamps, that exist in various sizes. The original clamp inserts have a diameter of 7mm, but the closest available size I found was 8mm. I also bought some hex screws to be cut to the exact size wanted.
The clamp bodies were reduced in size to a diameter of approx.7mm in order to insert them tighly into the headpiece body
View from the bottom
The clamps were secured with a drop of superglue, although they are tight enough to stay in that position.
The hexagonal head screws were cut to different lengths, so when the strings are on the bass they have all the same height, here is the final result
The work was rather easy to finish in approx.3 hours with no particular tools, just a Dremel used to cut and smooth the parts. The cost of the bike clamps and screws was just a few Euros.
Thanks
Augusto
