Steinberger Guitars GT-Pro Deluxe BK

I bought this because I needed a small, lightweight backup guitar for gigs. Unfortunately, it's not really suitable for gigging, but as a travel guitar or something to keep next to the sofa to noodle around on, it's a great buy.

The guitar arrived in good condition and was set up well (the action was a tad high for my liking but it was easy to adjust). The intonation was good and there were no sharp fret edges. The neck width is very small at the nut so, if you have large hands, chords may feel a little cramped down there. Personally, I don't have an issue with this and find the neck quite comfortable to play.

Despite not having the carbon fibre neck of the original Steinbergers, the guitar holds its tune very well, however, when you do need to make tuning adjustments, the compromises that needed to be made to get the guitar into the 250-300 price bracket become clear. The tuners are really bad! They are difficult to turn (especially with the tension on the low E string) and the gearing seems a little imprecise, making it easy to over/under shoot the pitch you're going for. To make headless guitars work, you really need good quality materials for the bridge/tuners, which this guitar does not have. Having said that, the tuners are functional and are adequate for situations where there aren't fluctuations in temperature and you don't need to tune-up in a hurry!

Materials aside, the design of the trem system is fantastic: it's easy to adjust and the ability to lock the trem, turning it into a hard-tail, is a great feature. It does not have the ability to drop-tune like the original, but it is a great system and you can divebomb to your heart's content without affecting the tuning too much.

The pickups are ok and the switches and knobs feel good, with no hums, pops or crackles. There is a very noticeable volume change when switching between pickups, which can be mitigated by changing the pickup height, but it would have been good to have a better balanced set installed.

The position of the volume knob is very close to the strings and for my playing style, it really gets in the way and is a bit annoying to keep hitting off it. For other players, this won't be an issue but it might be something to consider.

All in all, it's a solid little inexpensive guitar, it's just let down by the fact it can't easily be tuned. I played it at a couple of gigs, and it was quite stress-inducing when the tuning started to wander. I have decided to keep it around as a convenient practice instrument and will gladly chuck it in a suitcase next time I go on holiday.

Decent guitar, not sure how much quality you can expect at this price point.
I wish Gibson would do more with this IP and create some higher end steinberger guitars with better specs and quality control.

pros
- Changing strings, intonation and action is a breeze, stable tuning.
- Trem feels solid and can be locked in place with the flip of a lever.
- Obviously very portable and fits in a large suitcase.
- Very comfortable and balanced to play standing or sitting.

cons
- Double ball strings are more expensive and hard to find gauges, they should just ship it with the adapter for regular strings included. It's also really hard to find the adapter now.
- Fretwork is kind of iffy, out of the box it plays if I don't set the action too low but it was only a couple spots that I fixed myself.
- One of the strap bolts didn't fit the hole drilled and came lose so look out for that. Not something you can't fix yourself.
- Had to resolder the bridge pickup.
- Neck profile was thicker than I expected, much more than an ibanez or jackson but this is personal preference.

Pickups are low output for humbuckers. But they sound good enough to me so I'm not going to replace them soon, works fine from clean to high gain.

Out of the gigbag the guitar looks as expected however mine had a cosmetic flaw on thr edge of the fretboard that must have occurred during final finishing in the factory, so really only a workmanship issue. As others have said this is a cheap copy of the 80s Resin Steinbergers and the humbucker pickups are a bit cheap and thin sounding. I found the single coil ok for me. The bridge saddle design takes some getting used to as you can't dive-bomb and the let the strings go totally slack as the saddles all slip out of place. The neck profile is a bit chunky for my taste. My main use for the Steiny is as a travel guitar. Why buy a traveller when you can have this real electric that fits in a suitcase.