The title kind of sounds like a spam ad, doesn’t it? But it’s totally serious!
We’ve all heard of or even personally experienced guitars straps coming off their strap buttons, potentially causing serious harm to them. I’ve played for years without mishap without using strap locks. I’ve had some close calls, but no catastrophic accidents. My buddy Phil warned me awhile back that I was just asking for trouble by not having them on my guitars. I just said, “Yeah, I know I should do it, but hey, I’ve been lucky so far…”
Well, my luck almost ran out because I almost had a terrible mishap the other day. If you follow my blog, you know that I’ve just gotten my new Prestige Heritage Elite. I was in my studio jamming, and at the end of the song I was jamming to, I did a harmless thing: I reached over to my amp to turn it down; at which point, my body must’ve been at the right angle, and the strap came off the bottom strap button. My guitar quickly swung toward my amp, aimed straight at the grille cloth! Luckily for me, I was able to catch the guitar and press it against my leg to prevent it from doing any serious damage to either itself or the amp!
Soon after, I put the guitar down, turned off my amp, walked back into the house, told my wife I was going down to the local music store, got in my car and got a set of strap locks. I will NEVER be without strap locks again! Once I got them, it literally took five minutes to install them, and I thought that this would be good forum to share my experience, and to share how I installed them.
Installing the Strap Locks
I got Schaller strap locks because I could also use the locks on my Strat that came stock with Schaller butttons (Fender owns Schaller), so it was a no brainer to decide. So here’s how I did it:
- First, remove the original buttons with a screwdriver.
- When they come out, you’ll probably notice that the screws are a bit thicker with wider threads than the Schallers. This is not a problem.
- To be safe, as opposed to using pure wood filler (I used Plastic Wood because it dries evenly), I happened to have really thin dowel material that I could use as a shim in addition the wood filler. I placed the dowel in the screw hole, and marked where it would be flush with the surface of the guitar, then simply cut that length.
- Once the dowel was cut, I put some Plastic Wood into the screw hole, and with a toothpick, spread it up and down the hole. Take your time with this, and be as neat as possible. Then I wiped off the excess from the hole, then inserted my dowel. This made some Plastic Wood ooze a bit, so I cleaned that up as well.
- Then with my little power drill, I screwed in the new Schaller button.
- Repeat steps 3 – 5 for the next hole.
- Let it dry for a couple of days.
- Install the locks on your strap. That’s it!
That process took literally ten minutes! My strap ain’t coming off any time soon!
This is one of the toughest songs I ever wrote; not from a technical standpoint, but from an emotional one. It’s really an emotional purging. I’m glad I got through it!
I wasn’t too wild about the T5 when it came out a couple of years ago. No doubt it’s a gorgeous-looking and great-playing guitar. But as I feel about any hybrid, I feel that it was a compromise; not quite an acoustic, not quite an electric. And despite bearing the high-quality of all Taylor guitars I’ve played, the T5 wasn’t a guitar that I’d spend $2700 to buy. For that money, I’d get two dedicated electric and acoustic guitars, and be happy with switching between the two – which I do anyway, so it’s not a stretch.
Guitar Gear 