Guitar Straps

Guitar straps have been on my mind a lot lately. In fact just the other day I commented on Bluesky about how despite 30 years of playing, I still have to untangle my guitar strap everytime I put a guitar on. But that was just one of my obsessive thoughts about this nondescript guitar accessory. So I thought I might wax a bit on the blog about it. Who knows, maybe someday someone stumbles on this blog and finds the wisdom useful. 

I started my guitar journey on bass guitar and for the vast majority of my playing career, that's been my instrument. I came of age as a player during the grunge/alternative movement and I'm a strictly fingerstyle player so when I put on a bass, that strap is at maximum length. I don't go in for the extra long straps or anything, I just use the full length of a standard guitar strap. it puts the top of the bass just below my bellybutton (for a Jazz bass) and makes it so my plucking hand is nice and straight on the strings. Tilt the neck up at an angle a bit and the fretting hand is all good ergonomically too and that's a good 25 year career holding down the low end. Hot Tip - buy some good strap locks or that top button is gonna let go of the strap and you'll end up like me with a chip out of the bottom horn of evey bass you have because you keep dropping it. 

But moving over to guitar over the last couple years has brought a whole new set of challenges.

Electric guitar was pretty easy. It really just required shortening the strap a bit so that I hold the guitar over my belly now. Ironically, it's my continued devotion to fingerstyle playing that made this necessary. When I play fingerstyle on a bass it's more of a "walking with your fingers" motion while on guitar I use more of a claw or grabbing shape to my hand. So upwards and onwards.

But the acoustic guitar was another challenge altogether. 

Acoustic is an instrument I wasn't able to get comfortable playing for a long time until recently. I knew it had to do with ergonomics and how I was set up. I can play bass for hours, I can play electric for hours but acoustic was always painful around the 30 minute mark. Most of the advice online is that you should wear your acoustic up where it would sit when you're sitting down, which is at about chest level. I don't love this level, not only because I'm a punk and it's not cool. But also because it's a bit restrictive and it always feels like I'm bumping into my kazoo harness. But the ergonomics for my hands is much better. I'd still rather play electric, but bringing the strap up helped. It didn't 100% fix it though, I had to take a few more steps. 

First, I switched to a lighter guage of strings. This can't be understated, going down a few sizes has been immense for my barre chords and stamina. But there was one more strep that finished it off, and again it was the strap. And I have a fun story about that. 

Up until a couple of weeks ago I was attaching my strap to my acoustic by using the button on the butt of the guitar then tying the other end off under the strings at the headstock behind the nut. This balances the guitar nicely but makes fretting and getting your hand in around the 1-3 fret positions a bit tough. E and G chords for example always felt like I was bumping in to something. 

A few weeks ago while walking the dogs, I stumbled on a badly broken guitar at the park. Like Pete Townsend meets Jimi Hendrix smashed. To shreds you say. It made me a bit sad to see an instrument reduced to splinters but I got to wondering if there was anything there that I could make use of. And there was - a single guitar strap button. So I grabbed that chunk of old wood, brought it home, removed the button and installed it on my acoustic following the excellent instructions from the Gibson Guitars YouTube channel.