While not exactly technology-related this fix has made me very happy and solved an issue I’ve been struggling with for years so I had to share it!

I bought an Epiphone Explorer guitar almost nine years ago and quickly discovered it was near impossible to play standing up with a strap due to “neck dive”.

Neck dive is when the neck of the guitar feels heavier than the body so when you let go of the guitar and let it hang by the strap the neck droops toward the ground. This means that when you are playing it standing up you have to constantly support the weight of the guitar neck with your fretting hand to stop it falling. This makes it very difficult to move around the neck freely.

The only suggestion I could find at the time I bought the guitar was using a wide leather or suede strap so that the friction and surface area of the rough underside clung to your shirt. This didn’t help much at all and just made me feel uncomfortable with my shirt being yanked on. I ended up losing my nice leather strap at school later that year and didn’t even bother replacing it. Until now anyway…

The Fix

I’ve recently gotten back into playing guitar and figured I’d look into fixing the issue again. It turns out that the issue is caused by the improper placement of the neck strap button (I.e. the thing your strap attaches to on the guitar toward the neck). On the Epiphone it is positioned on the flat, cut-off looking bit near the neck on the side of the guitar (I.e. the area where the top “horn” would protrude from on a strat-style guitar. See photo below). Having the button here changes the centre of gravity and pivot point for the guitar when used with a strap.

(Red circles in photos show strap button locations. Original location on left, new location on right)

On the Gibson model (And some other manufacturers from what I’ve seen) this button is instead placed on the back on the guitar just below where the neck joins the body of the guitar.

Placing the button on the back-centre of the guitar not only helps the guitar balance much better, it also helps stop the strap coming off the button which would sometimes happen in the old location due to the strange angle of the surface the button is placed on.

I must admit it did feel strange drilling into my beloved guitar but it is well worth it. The guitar balances perfectly now so the neck no longer dives! If you are going to do it I’d also recommend buying some Straplok buttons to replace the originals as they will offer even more security from the strap coming off the guitar.