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Music

Strap On: A Guide to Totally Weird Guitar Straps

There's no reason you can't hold your guitar up and look cool at the same time.

Let’s face it. Tricking out a guitar can be a costly adventure. Custom paint, gold hardware, vintage humbuckers, etc. Perhaps all your ultimate axe is missing is a great strap. After searching tirelessly, I found that no matter what you may be into, there is a strap out there for you. These are just a few of the more interesting ones I found.

I first saw this kind of strap used by Santana. If you play in a punk band, I’m not sure this is the strap for you. It’s more of the “let’s jam” strap, although I can’t imagine it being very comfortable if you are trying to rip into a solo for six hours.

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This strap is made of real snakeskin. It’s also $250 bucks and unless you’re badass enough to pull it off, you’re going to look like an idiot wearing it. So how do you know if you’re badass enough? Did you kill the snake yourself? I didn’t think so.

Want to look like you’re playing guitar in a Daft Punk video? I came across this nifty instructables showing you how you can with just an X-Acto knife, some wires, and a whole bunch of duct tape.

So you’re trying to take your band out of the darkness and into the light? There is a whole strap series for you. If you’ll notice, the first cross is wrapped in a treble clef. A terrific way to show off that you like music and have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you would like to remain in the darkness, simply flip the strap.

If you got a gig playing guitar for Danzig or Judas Priest, you should probably go out and buy this right now. What is really great about this strap is that it can also be used if anyone tries to give you shit for wearing an all leather jumpsuit.

A good number of the straps out there are in the country and western vein, but not many of them carry the Native American aesthetic. The best part about this strap is the fringe. Imagine pulling off a guitar swing with that fringe blowing in the wind. Now imagine that same scene in slow motion.

This strap has some positives and negatives. One of the positives is that it has been used by Lemmy from Motorhead and if you can pull it of you will look like an ultra badass. If you can’t pull it off, you’ll end up looking like the guy from Saving Private Ryan that everybody hated. Plus, it was featured in Rock Band which takes down its originality points.

By far, my favorite strap. It was custom made for singer Johnny Hallyday and features all kinds of awesomeness; wolves, motorcycles, eagles, cool hair, and Telecasters. Choose this strap and feel the flyness rain down upon you.

I racked my brain for a while trying to figure out something good to say about this. I eventually had to give up.