Is Your Guitar Balanced
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- In this video, I will explain how I approach guitar balance to avoid neck/headstock dive.
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A neck dive will create a huge difference in the way the guitar feels, and therefore will impact the way you play. I love the design of an SG but I find it impossible to play, so out the door it goes, it also depends on how high you would like the guitar to be hang on your shoulders, if you are not very tall like Angus young and the guitar body is literally supported by your armpit it may be very comfortable, I think that a well balanced guitar when hang without touching it, should have the neck in an angle upwards a little, anyway it's all very personal.
As a result of many years of playing If the upper strap button is between the 11th and 15th fret, the guitar will be well balanced.
Presumably, the closer the strap button is to the headstock, the less likely neck dive is going to be?
In this case, a body shape with long top horn (like the one in the video) might be a safer bet.
Or one winds up supporting the neck (sometimes unconsciously) impeding the fretting hand.
If you've got a guitar with bad neck dive, having a strap made of really slick material is going to make it worse, or more apparent. You can use a strap that is made of a more natural woven material or even leather and it can help with this somewhat, in fact I think it helps quite a bit. If you don't care about looks, I even stitched some drawer liner material I had to the inside of a slippery strap where it meets my shoulder/back and it helped a ton.
I own a bunch of guitars with different shapes. The one that feels most balanced to me is the strat. For me, it seems that the further a guitar's shape deviates from the strat style, the more balance it loses.
So much of your content is in reference to things that are player/builder preference. It really makes great content and lots of useful information to think about when planning my next build! I really like a 2 1/2" wide fairly thick leather straps that have enough stiffness and friction to hold the neck at whatever angle you need. It's nearly impossible to play my DOUBLE NECK sg with a thin fabric strap.
Counter weight. This is a hack job, but it works and also improves sustain. I drill a 1/2" or 5/8" hole in where the bottom strap button goes. About 4" deep. The bottom of the hole ends up about 1/2" or less from where the strings go through the body. I put a solid steel bar in the hole, same length as the depth of the hole, held in with wood glue. Scuff up the steel bar with sand paper so the glue adheres to it. Before putting the bar in, drill and tap a hole in the outter end for the strap button. As long as the body I'm working with is under 5 pounds, weight-wise, the total weight of the finished guitar ends up under 10 pounds, usually around 8 pounds.
One thing I do during the design phase is look at the effect 3x3 tuning machine arrangement has compared to 6 inline tuners. Even then, I try to design the headstock to be as short as possible, especially if I’m using a light weighing wood for the body.
You won't believe it, I was about to ask you for this topic with a comment on the video where you talk about weight! This is great, can't wait!
I don’t believe you😊
@@buzzedalldrink9131 😂
I see a blue guitar. Fabulous color. I’m sitting in the hospital trying to catch up with the videos.
Hope everything is okay Sarge!
This issue is especially important with bass guitars. Neck diving could affect your performance as you are holding the neck trying to keep it up.
Bass necks are longer, machine heads heavier, etc. so neck diving is more an issue than on a guitar.
As you mentioned, one of headstock weight reduction strategies (not fender style basses), is reducing the headstock size, using lighter tuners (Ex: cort A5) or just displacing the back body strap button up (Ex: Shecter Omen Extreme 4).
Quality and comfort is on the details.
I also stick mostly to traditional designs so I don't worry about it too much. Just like Gibson doesn't worry about it! I recently built a guitar similar to a LP special that neck dives a bit on the strap and tail dives a bit when sitting on my leg. Not much you can do there. Even the angle you wear it on the strap makes quite a difference to the balance.
I gravitate toward short scale length builds for myself.. and they usually are balance-problematic. So it’s a crap shoot. Thanks for the tutorial
My SG special has the headstock dive syndrome. Had it drop down on the console one night and retired it from active duty afterwards. I have considered adding mass with a bigsby or a chunk of lead in the cavity
A relatively simple concept which you seem to have overlooked is, dont use unbalanced timbers. By which I mean, dont use a heavy, dense timber for the neck, while making the body from lightweight timber like Pauwlonia. Its not rocket science, surely? But Ive seen some you tube builders doing that😮
This isn't really great advise for someone trying to make a high quality guitar to sell to someone else, but I feel like on most guitars you can move the rear strap button up the body a bit. Obviously you don't want to sell a guitar to someone with a patched up hole on the heel, but if you've got a favorite guitar you already own and don't care, it's easy to do. Could probably even be done on a prototype to if you are a luthier who makes a similar body shape every time. This can make the guitar feel like it sits more "angled back", but I dunno. If you draw an imaginary line in your head between the two strap buttons on most guitars, then imagine it held with the strap buttons level (or even just hold one up), you have a guitar with the headstock angled down just based on geometry alone.
More great tips, thank you.
Gorgeous guitar bro
Since it wasn't mentioned, the Kiesel Hyperdrive has a removable 1.3lb counterbalance weight in it's upper rear horn.
It's a fairly small pointy body and can be ordered with various body woods.
It's a neat idea because it can be added to any guitar after the build. And I guess any routed cavity could be used to similar effect to dial in the right weight. (maybe first test it with tape?)
I've also heard of people putting weight in the control cavity.
A few simple candidates
- brass paperweights
- scientific weights
I got a problem, what if headless guitar??
I have this issue with a Steve Vai flame copy i built up from parts. It is neck heavy. In hindsight the basswood body is partly or mostly responsible i think. Maybe ash or alder would have been heavier? Im looking at adding an oversized brass block to the tremolo to maybe help balance things out. Ive already tried moving the straplocks around so im hoping the brass block helps.
Thanks!
Makes me think about putting lighter parts on my 10 lb les paul! I love it, but it is heavy
Before you spend any money, strip it down and weight the guitar without the parts to see if it will be worth the expense.
@@HighlineGuitars Wisdom
ask Ned Steinberger how to balance a guitar and especially bass
Answer: You make them look ugly.
Not sure this is worth a video when you give very few pointers and then say that some neck dive is not really a problem. Personally I find neck imbalance very annoying. I'd be interested to see if others do too
As a bass player, I really do. I don't wana hurt anybodys feelings, but I can't stand some broadly used bass brands because this.
I love my ESP Viper, but I can't play it standing up because of the neck dive... I've spent over $100 in straps and accessories to combat it, but it still drives some amount.
@@Clabian96 On my Epiphone LP I actually put a SUPER long screw with spacers I had, in the front Strap Clip, which extended it to around the13th fret position which makes it good, but it looks pretty silly. OK for my practice at home though.
Duct tape & string.
neck dive ( naturally ) wont happen, because no matter how u balance it, guitar body will always be heaviest part, so just ignore the headstock weight, what u need to balance is horizontal CG of the body need to be at the middle of ur strap position horizontally, as for vertical CG u want to make it as low as possible so ur left hand ( on the frets ) does not need much work to counter weight, then the strap height difference between butt and head will dictate how much "natural" playing angle u want to be, its preferensial