Comfortable, neoprene straps for almost any musical instrument you can think of

I’ve tried to learn to play guitar a couple of times in my life, and I’ve learned a few things.  1) When you’re only five feet tall, holding an acoustic guitar feels like clasping a baby grand piano to your chest.  2) Electric guitars are heavy, and you must have a strap to help you hold it.  3) No matter what instructors say, your fingers can be too short to make chords on a guitar.  4) Typical guitar straps can cause neck and shoulder pain because they hang the heavy instrument off your shoulder, and they often have scratchy edges that can feel like they are cutting your throat.  Sadly, that’s all I’ve learned – never could get the hang of playing that baby grand piano that I tried clutching to my chest…

After hearing Julie talking about playing her ukuleles, I decided that maybe a uke would be the magic instrument that I could learn to play.  I asked for a ukulele for Mother’s Day this year, and I’ve been strumming away since then.  Ukes are light enough that you don’t usually see them with a strap, but I decided I wanted one anyway because the uke seems to want to jump out of my hands when I’m going for one of the more difficult chords.  I’ve used fabulous, extremely comfortable neoprene straps from Op/Tech on our big DSLR cameras, camera bags, and even some of our bigger, heavier gear bags.  The Op/Tech straps have cushioning and some stretchiness, so they don’t feel like they are breaking a shoulder bone, and their soft edges are never scratchy or rough.  I wondered if they made instrument straps, too.  They don’t, but Neotech, a division of Op/Tech, does.

Neotech makes straps for stringed instruments (like guitars, mandolins, ukuleles, banjos, bouzoukis, and many others), accordions, brass and woodwind instruments, and who knows what else.  Prices and strap styles vary by instrument, but the strap for mandolin and ukulele is available at Amazon for about $18.  It comes with all sorts of quick-connect straps and end pieces so you can adjust the length and attach it to your instrument with either an adjustable strap on the headstock or with leather tabs to attach to strap buttons on both ends.  One strap button is required for the bottom of the body, so I need to find someone to add one to my ukulele before my Neotech strap gets here.