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Neck diving


Rocknrumble

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Posted

Does any one know why explorer-style basses have such balancing issues while guitars don't seem to have this problem? My guess is the length of the bass neck coupled with the lack of an upper horn, which acts like a lever to lift the neck up. Also they like to put heavy maple necks on lighter mahogany bodies. Am I right, or is there something else?

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Posted

That's all true but it's not unfixable either. For example, this bass balances fine, even with a heavy five string maple, steel reinforced neck...

 

finished_bass2.JPG

 

 

To get a bass to balance you need to move the strap button as far out towards the neck as possible. It's easy to to with a bolt on neck due to the thicket body wood under the neck pocket, which make a very good mounting point for the button. Other solutions involve strap button extension bars, such as this one that I put on my Steinie...

 

StrapHook1.JPG

 

The beauty of this bar is that it not only makes a perfect strap point, but it is also bent to get the strap centered along the body plane so the bass has no tendency to face away from me, or pull down when playing. One of these can be installed in seconds to any bass, is virtually unnoticible when playing and works perfect. It's night and day how much better my Steinie plays now that it is positioned properly.:cool:

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Posted

Never seen those strap bar do-hickeys.

Unique.

Does it hurt your left hand if you forget about it during an upper-fret adventure?

 

The explorer than visited here(got sold because most of the stages we are on are too small for the bass player to be driving a pointy, school-bus-sized bass around) got cured with this and a wider strap:

Explorer06b-1.jpg

 

12th fret?

Mine usually wind up way past that.

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Posted

Never seen those strap bar do-hickeys.

Unique.

Does it hurt your left hand if you forget about it during an upper-fret adventure?

 

You will never ever be able to touch that bar with your left hand, it is completely out of the way. It's the best solution out there if you ask me, since beyond just balancing the bass it also repositions where it hangs, so the neck is not so far a reach.

 

Your explorer is about the same as mine, here's what I did...

 

Uber-neck-plate.JPG

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Posted

I've wondered if getting some small steel plates and mounting them on the edge of the body at the heel (recessed of course) would counter-balance the neck without adding too much overall weight.

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Posted

well, the piece i added on the headless is really light, aluminium thing. Important is to move the point you put the strap up to the twelvieth to fifteen fret line (make some trying to see what could be your best balance)..

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