ugly, but it works for neck dive

[roky]

what am i doing in the luthiers corner?? -- well i did build the body about 30 yrs ago, even if i don't know still what i'm doing -- but the attached photos are my "solution" to severe neck-dive i created, when 1) decided to have the neck join the body at the 17th, rather than the 15th(for all those fabulous runs i make way up there, of course), then when the guitar proved to heavy, i 2)planed the body down to sg thickness -- this gave me a 6.5 weight, but bad diving -- so after replacing tuners with gotoh/kluson, which helped, i extended the top strap button with a 2" piece of aluminum rod -- looks like crap, but now that i'm in stratocaster land with my mini-horn, she's balanced, light, excellent access to upper frets -- but mostly i meant this as a caution to anyone contemplating the same correction: this is what it looks like. i dont' care, it works.

 

[Dick Banks]

Maybe I'm missing something, but ugly? Nah! Looks like something you don't see everyday, true, but quite functional!

 

[roky]

thanks -- when its strapped on, it looks pretty normal, just that the strap is attached 2" away from the body, i.e., one very long strap button -- and it caused no damage to the body, since i used the same screw hole, just a longer screw, so it is reversible

 

[anthagio]

Looks cool! But beware that longer screw creates higher torque against body so it will put more stress on the edge of the screw hole.
Deeper screw into wood may alleviate some stress but still not comparable to the original screw. In addition the screw itself will also be stressed a lot.
Just be careful when you swing the guitar around!

 

[roky]

yes, my concern also -- and i would not do this with a valuable guitar, or a heavy one -- i think the bass i've seen corrected this way would be too much stress

 

[bluesriffdev]

Does the job, but the comment above is correct in that such a long strap button will inevitably stress the screw when you've got it strapped on.

How deep, and how wide is your rear control cavity? If it's already been machined for a large piece of plastic, you could get a heavy piece of machined steel or brass (ideally stainless steel as its non-corrosive) cut to fit, and maybe even make the cover deeper (and thus shorter guides around the internal cavity edges) with just enough clearance to not hit the pots and switches. As an added benefit, you'll basically get free shielding.

That's all I can think of, other than maybe using a heavier bridge, or welding a sustain block to the current one if it's a string-through body, or a top-loader with enough space for one. Another benefit to this is that you'll get more sustain.

 

[roky]

thanks for the suggestions -- lots of room in the control cavity, and i also have a bigsby i could throw on -- but than i'm back into the problem i originally had:too heavy for my aching back(back is even worse when i sit and play) -- and i already have 2 guitars i love which are too heavy, this was an experiment to see if i could get the same sound in an sg size guitar -- and even with the same pickups, i now know i can't -- so, for now, the "lightweight guitar that sounds like my lp" idea is dead -- in which case i might as well put the bigsby on, take the strap button extension off, and it will have a place on the wall as my "bigsby", which will bring it in at about 7.5#, not bad really -- the epi trad pro II, and the jtv-59 both come in at about 8.5, which i can do for a couple hours standing, before it hurts, and they both have the sound i love.

 

[WhiteEpiLP]

My suggestion is a 3" wide strap with some suede on the underside. It'll get a good grip on your shoulder and really fight the dive.

 

[roky]

yup, got one of those, it does help -- i even read of someone taking a roll of that shelf material you use to prevent stuff sliding, and gluing it to the underside of the strap

 

[poro78]

My friend's guitar has some neck dive issues and we're planning to try tire wheel weights to fix that.
There's a lot of space in control cavity and we thought that since these weight straps have adhesive backing and they are made of 5 and 10 gram pieces (full strap is 60 grams), we can add weight little by little until the guitar is balanced.
Well, that's the plan...we'll see how it works...

 

[roky]

its been a couple weeks of playing it with the extension on, and i will say its the most comfortable guitar i have -- doesn't have the sound of my lps, but with some probuckers in it, does a great imitation of a tele, when i split the coils