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Spector 5 hangs downward

joenoone

joenoone

Mar 21, 2009
387
206
Clermont, FL
#1
I picked up a 2005 Spector Legend 5 and love it, until I put a strap on it and play it standing up. the body tends to tilt downward. Not neck dive, rather the angle of the body instead of being perpendicular to the ground is at about a 10-20 degree off towards the ground.

I don't want to keep drilling holes and repositioning the strap hooks guessing. Anyone have an idea on how best to proceed?

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#5
The strap button is pretty high already, quite strange that it hangs like that. Maybe it is too high. Almost looks like you can add another strap button lower. That might fix the problem and give your bass two legs to stand on (if you put both buttons the same style.
 
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#6
The reason it tilts forward is because the 'centre of gravity' is slightly 'forward' of the plane defined by the strap buttons. Most guitars are like this because the masses of the bridge, pickups and neck are all on one side of the body.

The only way to completely solve this (which will probably be unpopular) is to move one or both strap buttons 'forward'. Move one or both buttons to the front of the body: horn button on horn front, and/or rear button on body front (probably needs to be positioned above the bridge near the body top to avoid the strap touching the bridge).

Alternatively, if you want to keep the rear button on the body edge, moving it further up towards the top of the body will help *a little* (not much), with the disadvantage that at low playing angles the strap will want to pull itself off the button.
 
#7
However ... my previous post refers to a guitar that is hanging freely, not in contact with the player's body (a rare situation).
Usually the tilt of a guitar is mostly determined by how it rests against your body, this is something you should check, you might be able to solve the problem by altering the guitar's position and/or altering your posture.

I am not really 'encouraging you' to place strap buttons in radical positions as described in my last post, i am just explaining what determines the tilt of a freely hanging guitar. Due to how the guitar rests against your body, moving the buttons as described might not actually solve the problem, although it might help to some unknown degree.
 
#9
This imbalance is caused by the neck. Neck is forward from the body to begin with, plus it is bowed forward. This is 5 string washing board to add to the momentum arm created by the above two factors. Body to neck weight ratio is also small on this. The strap pegs are already mounted as high up as possible by the manufacturer to counter this imbalance at least a little. There is no solution to this and you should just get used to this. Putting the bass higher (Victory Wooten style) is recommended. If you want to play this Novoselic low, this is simply a wrong bass for that. You can try some super light tuners which will take a degree off that lean. Basically you need lower the weight of the neck and increase the weight of the body in the bridge area, but that is rhetorical as it is not really something you would do to a Spector.
 
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#10
kgbeast said:
The strap pegs are already mounted as high up as possible by the manufacturer to counter this imbalance at least a little.
Click to expand...
Spector Legends have the rear pin mounter more-or-less on a line with the top of the bridge. Euros position that pin a bit further out than that, putting it about an inch or so above the bridge. I wonder if that makes a difference regarding this..
 
#11
wvbass said:
Spector Legends have the rear pin mounter more-or-less on a line with the top of the bridge. Euros position that pin a bit further out than that, putting it about an inch or so above the bridge. I wonder if that makes a difference regarding this..
Click to expand...
putting the rear peg more up like on Euros would probably help quite a bit, may even fix the problem entirely. Someone with euro 5 string can share the impressions on that. Looking at the construction, both design must have quite a bit of neck dive too.
 
#12
kgbeast said:
putting the rear peg more up like on Euros would probably help quite a bit, may even fix the problem entirely. Someone with euro 5 string can share the impressions on that. Looking at the construction, both design must have quite a bit of neck dive too.
Click to expand...
I have a couple Euros. I was surprised to find that they do tilt a little on a strap. This is something I’ve never noticed when playing them. I did notice that the curvature of the body puts the pin on the upper horn well behind most of the mass of the bass, and the lower pin is slightly back as well. So, yeah, the neck in relation to the pins probably contributes to the face plant.

Like I said, though, I’ve never noticed this when playing. I also don’t have much of an issue with neck dive unless the strap is really smooth and narrow. The straps I use are 1.75” wide, and a strip of KT tape on the back of the strap is enough to stave off any balance issues. One of my Spectors is an RST, and it is so light that I expected neck dive to be a problem. It isn’t.
 

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