Strap Button location for balance

BAY,

Yes, moving to the heel of the neck will certainly help.

You could also use one of those straps that is tied to the headstock (behind the nut) ... FWIW, I prefer strap buttons.

IMPO, I have found the placement you describe to be a little more difficult to get the strap on, but that may be a matter of taste.

More importantly, I have found that it does not seem to allow the guitar to be as snug against your body as placing the strap button on the side of the heel (as seen below).

The following illustrations describe basically what I’ve done on every acoustic I’ve ever installed a strap button on.

Note that opinions of the exact ideal location vary, but not by much.

Installing a strap button is very easy to do.

Just make sure:

1) that the drill bit you use is not bigger than the shaft of the screw,

2) that you measure the length of the screw that will actually be threading into the wood (i.e. the part extending beyond the actual button and felt disc) and wrap a bit of masking tape around the bit at that depth - so that you don’t drill any deeper than necessary, and

3) make sure you drill in at a bit of an upward angle, so that the strap is least likely to fall off of the button.

Cheers,
D2o


EDIT: The following diagrams are for right handed guitars. Lefties would follow the same procedure on the opposite side of the heel.


(this is illustrating where I usually place a strap button)



(the angled line in the bottom image is illustrating the upward angle that I was trying to describe)



(last, but not least, a pretty good rendition of what I would do, as found on the net)

If it's noticeable enough to be annoying, it sounds like your guitar is a bit neck-heavy. I'm not sure moving the strap button will help much.

I can't tell from the photo what king of strap it is- if it has the smooth underside, it'll slip on your shoulder as the neck drags it down. I have this problem on my Esquire-ish guitar, which has a very light body and is a little neck-heavy. But a leather strap, with the raw suede to the inside, keeps it on my shoulder. While it's still neck-heavy a bit, I don't have to keep grabbing it to have it stay put.

Or, if that doesn't float your boat, you might add some weight to the heel end. A 1-pound velcro-wrap ankle weight, like the kind joggers use, wrapped and secured around the heel end of the strap, ought to balance things out.

Yes, a bit murky on my end. I meant towards the heel of the guitar, not the neck heel.

I envision it, say, 4-6" up the strap from the rear strap button, far enough up to avoid contacting the guitar body (and thereby disrupting the way the strap hangs), but nonetheless as far to the rear of the guitar's balance point as possible.

Not saying this would work- but it ought to. Some playing with the amount of weight might be needed; a pound may be overkill, depending.

EDIT: And, it further occurred to me, that the weight need not be dead weight, but perhaps could be useful weight, like for example a strap mounted piezo preamp. Of course, it might be tough to adjust the slider controls with it mounted behind you on the strap.

Or hang an LPB-1 on there, clean distortion and the guitar in balance, all with one little box! ;D

Good ideas, 4real!

Dang! Maybe I was onto something with the variable weight distribution available in “The Beer Carrier”.

+1 - this is exactly what I was alluding to.

I relocated the strap button as I had initially thought would be best... and it seems pretty good!


I like the Breedlove idea, D20, but I thought this would get in the way... especially considering my cut-away compared to the example pic you posted.
I do see the problem of the guitar feeling like it's pulling away from your body at this point. It seems the same on my Ibanez jumbo acoustic. It's a little annoying but it doesn't particularly bother me compared to how I suspect having the pin in the Breedlove location would.


Now...
How do I get rid of this unsightly hole where the strap button used to be?

There is a block of wood inside the guitar, so any filler would probably work...
but... any ideas so that it looks natural... maybe with the same sheen as the finish around the whole/filler?

Thanks
-BlackAngusYoung

Why not put another strap button back in that hole? This will give you (or others) options, and fill the hole.

Otherwise, I think a plastic plug of color matching the binding would be a heck of a lot easier than trying to match grain and color and everything.

Actually, it could be a decent place for a volume pot, as it wouldnt have as much of a tone impact as drilling through the top-beard would... if its not an electro-accoustic you would need to put a transducer in..


I always wondered what a P90 dumped right in the middle of the soundhole would sound like (steel strings ofc)

Actually, yeah I think I'll hold off on filling it. I have been trying to think of something creative to do with it, as in adding a knob or something. Just not sure what the knob should be for. The guitar has an enclosed preamp unit like most acoustic/electrics, but I basically look at it as a hollowbody electric. I have electric strings on it and play it through an electric tube amp. So I have wondered if there's anything I could do to it to give it a bit more of a ballsy sound. Maybe this is a good opportunity to add a knob or switch for something cool.

I wonder if it would be possible to add something like the Black Ice overdrive circuit they sell at Stewmac (but, then, I'd imagine just using an overdrive pedal is probably better.)

While I was doing this, I was thinking it might be fun just to add a dummy knob.... something kinda goofy looking from an old radio or something... or something more like an amp knob than a guitar knob... and then I could pause in the middle of playing and very seriously turn the knob while listening intently... people would think I'm doing some high-tech adjustments they're not musical enough to understand.
But the idea of adding a knob with an actual purpose is definitely more better.


That's the kind of idea I've been trying to come up with. I think something like that would work well with this guitar because it's hollow but thin and punchy. It has a definite electric feel. Maybe adding a p-90 across the soundhole would be cool, or even between the hole and the bridge.
Here's what the guitar actually looks like. Let me know if you have any creative ideas about it.


Oh yeah, they're fine. I just wanted to use the same strings I use on my electric guitars because I use this guitar for playing the same kind of thing, or for practising electric stuff without plugging in but with better tone than an unplugged solidbody. I wanted it to have the same feeling for bending and stuff... but I have acoustic strings on my jumbo, which also has a magnetic pickup.

Great! Thanks. I didn't realize there were threads about Black Ice already. Actually, maybe I did at one point. But I didn't now, so thanks for the link.
Yeah, I don't know about on-board effects either, but then I've never tried any. It just seems like something I wouldn't expect to be too great. But it might be interesting even if it's not really overdrive like a Tube Screamer or something.
I'll read those threads and see what kinda vibe I get. I was interested in them already, not originally for this guitar, when I saw them on Stewmac. It might be a cool addition to this guitar.

Here in Canada, this model with these specifications is only available in this finish, and there's a black one with piezo pickup. Online, I see the in the States they have all sorts of groovy (and really tacky) colours available. There is also a line of pastel colours with flowery stuff going on marketed for women, because it's body supposedly feels comfortable for a woman.
Anybody see Ibanez Talman guitars like that where you live? I wonder if they're really as popular as Ibanez tries to make them sound or if it's just something weird on their website and at trade shows.




So... what I'm saying is my girly guitar could maybe use some Black Ice.

Continuing the derailment...

I mentioned it elsewhere, but since you're looking through those old threads looking for impressions re: the Black Ice and its ilk, I think you should keep a couple things in mind.

1) Most of the time when we've talked about these passive diode clippers, we've been looking at them in the context of a completely passive guitar. In order for diodes to give us a "pleasant" sort of distortion, they need a certain voltage to work with. For silicon diodes, it comes out around 1.4V peak-to-peak. This is beyond the reach of all but the hottest of single coils. Even with an HB, it's often only the very loudest parts of the signal - usually the initial pick attack portion - which will get clipped. That's not likely to sound too good. There won't be that nice compression sound through the sustain/decay portion of the note, and will likely just sound like there's something wrong somewhere in the system.

Like I said above (I did, didn't I?) I think your active preamp will give quite a bit more voltage output, at least if you really crank everything. This should make the thing work a lot better in general, so some of the opinions in some of those threads might just not apply in your case.

2) If we put aside all vintage/mojo corksniffing snobbery, the real important part of making an OD/distortion box sound good comes in what you do to the signal before and after the clipping section. I did say this in the other thread. Unfiltered diode clipping creates an awful lot of high-order harmonics which can sound harsh and fizzy and nasty. A guitar amp, with its limited bandwidth (what was that thing about a warm fart?) might reduce or mask this somewhat, and make it acceptable. If you're talking about running this thing into an acoustic amp, though, you might look into some filtering before and/or after the diodes. There's an EQ on the guitar, which would handle the before part, and I think an appropriate cap in parallel with the diodes could help with the after part.

If you look at the schematic for something like a Rat pedal, you'll see this kind of pre/post EQ thing. There's a capacitor from the signal hot to ground just before the opamp. This rolls off the high frequencies before they get amplified going into the diode clipping section. There's also a cap to ground after those diodes, cutting the high frequencies back again. In a FuzzFace type, the circuit has an extremely low input impedance, and acts pretty much the same as turning the guitar's Tone control way down before amplification happens.

Anyway, things to consider. I personally would not go buy the StewMac part, especially if you've got someplace you can get a pot, a couple diodes, and a cap or two without paying shipping.

BTW - since this circuit basically just goes across the jack, after all the other circuitry in the guitar, it would be very easy to try this outside of the guitar to experiment with part values and whatnot before your final install. If you don't like it for this, you can always buy an opamp, a few resistors, a couple jacks, and a box and build yourself a simple little stompbox OD.