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Poll: Best cure for neck dive

Best cure for neck dive?

  • Lightweight tuners

    Votes: 50 26.3%

  • Heavier bridge

    Votes: 10 5.3%

  • Better strap

    Votes: 81 42.6%

  • Other

    Votes: 49 25.8%
  • Total voters
    190
  • Poll closed .
#21
here's a long lasting fix: get a better balanced bass.
I used a strap to correct dive in a Warwick Thumb NT I once owned and it just caused more ergonomic issues & moved the tension to other areas of my body. Once I got a well balanced bass the ergo issues went away.
 
#23
this.


bjfuo8.jpg


shorten the strap, so it holds your bass when sitting down
 
#26
One of the things I have found is that some basses hang vertically very well. Thunderbirds are like that. If you expect it to hang like a Fender, it will reward you with neck dive. If you point the neck more or less toward the ceiling, it will balance well. Same goes with the EB-2 I have. I haven't tried an EB-0 or EB-3, but my expectation is that each of those will do the same thing. The strap button needs to be at the heel of the neck for this to work. Another way to deal with the issue, if you have an upper horn, is to relocate the strap button to the inside of the horn facing the neck. That may shift the way the strap acts on the bass and pull it into a more upright position. I haven't tried it with my P yet, but it is going to happen sooner or later.
 
#28
Not wanting to modify my vintage neck-dive-of-doom Epiphone Embassy, my own take on this concept was to fill a soft leather pouch with lead shot and hang it off the tail-end strap button along with the strap. If you had a strap lock, you'd end up having to attach it to the strap itself, I suppose.



Sid Fang ...that is a brilliant idea.
Necessity the Mother of Invention.
 
#29
My hollow body bass has horrible neck-dive. I make sure to rest my forearm on it to balance it out when I am playing and when I am not. It works wonders and I don't even notice when I play since I am so used to it. I do it with my Thumb NT 7 string especially and it works wonders.
 
#30
I think people needlessly obsess over this, I literally never think about this. Unless your just the wet noodle type- you probably belong in the nursing home & should give up playing if this is a problem (sorry, should have gone to Rants & Raves)...
 
#34
huckleberry1 said:
I think people needlessly obsess over this, I literally never think about this. Unless your just the wet noodle type- you probably belong in the nursing home & should give up playing if this is a problem (sorry, should have gone to Rants & Raves)...
Click to expand...
If you never think about it, you probably don't have a bass with neck dive. I no longer play my old Embassy much, so it's not a day-to-day problem, but going from a bass where one has to constantly apply pressure, either with the right arm or the left hand, to keep the neck from going south, to a bass that lets me use whatever plucking and fretting positions best suit the music was, if not Night and Day, at least Winter and Spring. You can get good at compensating, but it's never free.
 
#35
Lightweight tuners? I can't believe that everyone looks for a $100 solution to a $2 problem. If you've got neck dive, just balance the bass by mounting a stud that moves the strap mounting point on the horn farther out from the body.
 
#36
I generally hollow out the neck and fill it with helium. The problem is, helium is one slippery molecule and hard to contain. If that doesn't help enough, solid gold or lead hardware on the body should do the trick.

It should be done scientifically though; too much compensation and you will end up with the opposite condition; "Body Droop". I think that was Bill Wyman's problem. Oh, and be careful who you tell about it, if word gets out that you know how to fix Body Droop, the middle aged women will hound you to death. Don't ask how I know.

No, wait........buy a new bass.

Tom
 

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