1978 Bunker Pro Star electric guitar from a true design innovator

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've looked at Bunker guitars and basses several times before on Guitarz but I couldn't resist showing you this Bunker Pro Star guitar from 1978 as currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of US $1,999.

Dave Bunker was a guitar builder way ahead of his time. His designs date back to the 1960s and pre-dated the headless craze of the 1980s; this particular example is effectively headless - note how the headstock is not structurally part of the neck.  More interestingly, the guitar features Bunker's "tension-free neck" in which:

"... a heavy brass nut [was] fixed to a thick brass bar that was attached to another block of metal in the body. A wooden neck was routed out and slipped over this brass core. Strings were anchored into the nut and stretched down to tuners on the butt end of the guitar. The brass neck core took all the tension of the strings, keeping the wooden neck free of any tension whatsoever."

(Via My Rare Guitars)

How well in practice this actually worked, I couldn't possibly comment having never seen one of these "in the flesh" as it were, but I am reminded of the skeletal metal Born To Rock guitars and basses which also featured a floating neck which uses the strings themselves to actually position itself correctly.

G L Wilson

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