![]() It’s in the context of those New Wavey guitars of the early 1980s that this rather fetching Riverhead belongs. I have one that I used to be able to cram on top of the family’s shore supplies when we vacationed. Cort in Korea licensed the design and produced a number of brands popular in the early 1980s. It was, of course, Ned Steinberger (and his principal disciple, as it were, Andy Summers of The Police) who codified the headless guitar concept right around the end of the 1970s. Dave rather brilliantly stripped the guitar down to its essence, then appended all these removable pods and appendages (including detachable head), making it truly a Starship Enterprise! I don’t know exactly when New York guitarist Alan Gittler began his experiments on minimalist guitars, but I think it was after Bunker. Whether or not you buy that argument, probably the first headless guitar I’m aware of was Dave Bunker’s appropriately named Astral Series Sunstar, which debuted in around 1966. You even orient to them in a different way that kind of negates the idea of a head. ![]() Oh, like all guitars they need some basic structural components and they need some sort of tuning mechanism, but they kind of reduce the guitar to a plank with strings. ![]() ![]() You can probably justifiably consider certain lap steel guitar designs to be the forerunners of the headless guitar. Vintage 1984 Riverhead Unicorn Electric Guitar
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