The Ridgewing guitar system is built around the ability of the player to instantly slacken or re-tension the strings to allow easy disassembly and reassembly of the guitar. The mechanism developed to enable this consists of a cam-lever tucked into  the back of the headstock that, when rotated out, caused the gap between the neck and the headstock to shrink or grow by about 5mm, which is how much the strings stretch when tuned from slack up to pitch. The cam mechanism works very well and is relatively easy for the do-it-yourselfers to implement with hand tools. The headstock mounting pins require a simple jig to hold them exactly right to fit in the neck, and the lever can be hand-carved in a couple of hours out of a five-dollar piece of 6061 aluminum measuring 10mm x 20mm x 300mm available overnight from McMaster-Carr.

To enable the Ridgewing guitar system to offer self-tuning required an interchangeable headstock on which was mounted the German-developed Tronical self-tuning system. The Tronical system is wonderful piece of German engineering, as is its very German 75-page user manual. The system is self-contained and fits like a little backpack on the back of the headstock.  It consists of a sensor/power/control unit, a circuit board the shape of the headstock, and six self-contained servo-tuning units that mount on the circuit board and poke out through the front of the headstock like regular tuners.  The servo/tuners look and act pretty much like regular tuners until you push the system’s ON button. Then six LED’s start to blink red, and all the tuners come to life turning this way and that as you strum the strings. After a few seconds the strings find their correct frequencies, and the red LEDs turn green one by one until all six turn green, at which point the system shuts itself off, and you are ready to play. It is not perfect, but it is a pretty neat system that anyone can buy and install on their own guitar as long as the headstock fits one of the twenty or so “standard” headstock circuit board shapes that Tronical offers.

The big problem with mounting the Tronical system on the regular Ridgewing headstock is that the rear-mounted headstock lever mechanism can’t be used because the Tronical system is in the way. So the headstock had to be completely re-designed to have a side-action cam lever that would do the same trick of controlling the gap width between the headstock and the neck. Instead of the cam lever making direct contact with the neck as in the original design, the new cam mechanism operates a spring-loaded steel rod running down the middle of the headstock body that emerges between the mounting pins and makes contact with a hard point on the end of the neck. Because the contact points between the cam and the rod, and between the rod and the neck are so small, the pressures at these contact points are huge, and only extreme materials can be used – hard steel for the dowel and titanium for the lever. And keep a tube of lithium grease and some Q-tips handy so everything stays happy and slippery.

The Ridgewing self-tuning headstock works very well and is instantly interchangeable with the “regular” Ridgewing headstock, but, being machined out of aluminum, it has the problem of being heavy. When the self-tuning headstock is assembled with a solid graphite-epoxy neck and carbon-fiber grillwork body, which is very light, the guitar really wants to point at China. One solution is to use the self-tuning headstock with the solid-aluminum body frames so it balances out like a Les Paul, and you will probably need a wider shoulder strap.  But to keep things light, an open opportunity exists for some would-be Ridgewing Maker out there to design and market a Ridgewing-compatible super-light headstock body on which to mount the Tronical system.

Also, some keen-eyed observers have noted the Rev 1 self-tuning headstock design’s blocky shape, which from an industrial design perspective should instead be a swoopy extension of the neck-headstock flair. As this self-taught CAD designer only knows enough to be effective and dangerous, a real artist’s input would be welcomed.