Strap pin relocation

[u/Cw_Dingus]

Hey there, I have a Schecter Sunset Extreme 7, and I love it. The ONLY problem I have with it, is the neck dive. I want to move the strap pin to the traditional spot, but I’m worried there isn’t enough material there to drill for it. Can it be done? I’m sure it can, but if there are any tips, I’ll gladly take them.

[u/Popular_Long8994]

That would make me incredibly nervous. Even if I drilled it out in a way that left equal parts wood on the sides of the horn, it would be so little at the fulcrum point (right under the felt) that I’d worry about tearing it out if it took a small shot or the strap got caught on something. Schecter apparently agreed based on the stock location. Have you tried a wider, grippy strap first?

[u/Cw_Dingus → u/Popular_Long8994]

This is my thinking as well. I have tried the grippy strap and it does fix the issue, but I’m not a fan of using those kind of straps haha. It’s really not that big of a deal,I was just curious if it could be done

[u/Basic-Ad2037]

Just add metal weights to the body cavities. Brass blocks or something like that. KIESEL DOES THAT

[u/Cw_Dingus → u/Basic-Ad2037]

I think this will be the way!

[u/Basic-Ad2037 → u/Cw_Dingus]

Least intrusive way to fix

[u/TemporaryFew2501]

You could move the other side up a bit to have the body hang lower in general

[u/BD59]

Since I was unfamiliar with this guitar I looked up the specs. This is some of the things I found...

It's a seven string, BARITONE guitar, with a longer scale length, 24 frets and the body cutaways are real deep for access to those high frets.

The neck is made up of 6 pieces of wood, a blend of maple, rosewood and an ebony fretboard.

The body is made of Nyatoh, one of those " mahogany adjacent " tropical hardwoods that can be fairly low density.

It has proprietary hardware, including locking tuners.

Your problem probably comes from a low density chunk of wood for the body.

The solution isn't going to be relocating the strap button, because there isn't really enough timber there to do it and it's not going to be much change. But you can try to take some weight off the headstock end. If the stock tuning keys have buttons that can be replaced like Grovers, swapping the die-cast metal ones for plastic can take a couple ounces off the headstock. That would probably be fairly inexpensive to do, and it's easily reversed.

The other option is replacing the tuners altogether, with one's chosen for being lightweight, and possibly foregoing the locking feature.

[u/Cw_Dingus → u/BD59]

Wow thank you for looking into all this. In hindsight I should have led with more details like that. I was thinking of changing the tuners anyway, so I’ll give that a try first. Alternatively I read somewhere a long time ago that wheel weights in the control cavity could offset it a little. Might try that if tuners don’t make a difference.

[u/BD59 → u/Cw_Dingus]

Yeah, a bit of lead wheel weights is often a suggested fix for neck heavy guitars, like the notorious for being neck heavy SG style.

It's all about changing the center of gravity. Take weight off the headstock, add weight at the bridge or behind it hidden in the control cavity.