From industrial product designer and luthier Robin Stummvoll comes Verso Musical Instruments in Germany. Robin is a luthier with an eye for industrial design. His instruments are both modern and familiar both at once. You will immediately
notice the high quality of these seemingly simple designs upon picking up the Orbit Baritone.
The Orbit is a long 28.5” scale Baritone Guitar with freely moving magnetic pickups. The body is made from durable sheet metal and the pickups slide up and down so that you can place them in any position you please. Place the two pickups close to each other for a Strat like tone or far apart for your typical two pickup electric guitar tone. You can even split the strings, having the neck pup only picking up the three treble strings and the bridge pup picking up only the three bass strings. There’s truly an infinite amount of possibilities.
Both pickups are original designed and scatter-wound humbuckers. The neck pickup is transparent and bell-like with a nice airy tone, while the bridge pickup can do it all. It has warmth, punch and great articulation. Moving the pickups up and down the body can give you either drastic or incremental changes in your guitars tone.
The Orbit Baritone has one volume and one blender pot, so that you can blend in as much of each pickups signal as you want to. There is a notch in the middle of the blender pot, so that you know when both pickups are at unity volume.
From Verso:
“Due to its long scale of 28.5″ / 720mm this baritone guitar features a precise and gritty bass response in standard B to B or A to A tunings. The added length brings a distinctive warmth and accuracy to the upper strings rounded off with
lots of sustain. Due to the steel body the freely movable pickups catch up audible body resonance that adds natural harmonics and a wooden character. A richness that goes beyond the usual tone of an electric baritone.”
The neck of this guitar is made
of German Walnut with a slab Walnut fingerboard. The fret tangs are not visible and will never protrude from the sides of the neck during dryer seasons. The frets are also rounded “Semi Hemispherical” for a smooth and natural feel. The necks profile itself is a full feeling U shape with an oil finish for a non-sticky, very natural feeling neck.
The bridge on Verso's instruments is
pre-intonated like a flat-top acoustic. However, it can be moved to fine tune the intonation. Luthier Robin Stummvoll believes less is more and that having to many adjustment points on a guitar can
have adverse effects on the player enjoying their instrument. Read what he has to say on this subject below.
From Verso:
“Setting up a guitar sounds like a simple matter, but it requires knowledge and experience down to the smallest detail. In my opinion, there are too many and too easily accessible adjustment
points on an electric guitar. This often leads to a problematic setup. For this reason I use a simple, non-adjustable bridge construction (like the bridge of an acoustic guitar), which has to be filed to the right height. What sounds like a step back is actually a pro for the player: Much less to think about when it is set up correctly (and if you know what you are doing, it can still be quickly adjusted with just a file). The intonation can be corrected much faster by moving the whole bridge – all without tools. The connection of solid brass from string to body results in a beautiful bass response.”
Specs:
Model: Orbit Baritone
Color: Moss Green
Scale: 28.5”
Nut width: 1 & ¾”,
Nut Material: Tusq
Neck: German Walnut w/ carbon fiber reinforcements and truss
rod access at headstock
Neck shape: Verso Thick C .88”-.98”
Fingerboard: German Walnut
Fingerboard radius: 7.5” - 12” compound
Position Markers: Side markers only
Bridge: Handmade & pre-intonated wood w/ brass saddles
Pickups: 2 movable magnetic humbuckers. ‘Transparent’ model
in neck and ‘All-Around’ model in bridge (walnut covers)
Controls: 1 Vol, 1 Blend Pot (walnut knobs) Switchable mono / dual-mono output (use your mono amp, route route each Pickup in a seperate FX chain or record two tracks in your DAW)
Tuners: Schaller M6 locking
Weight: 6lbs 4.1oz
Case: Mono Sleeve Protective Gig-Bag
Comes w/ handmade custom wooden Verso guitar stand.
