Matt Heafy and Richter launch the Double Strap on April 1st – turns out its legit!
Richter Matt Heafy Double Strap
German company Richter Straps and Matt Heafy of Trivium chose April 1st to launch a new double guitar strap. Everyone thought it was a huge joke at first. Turns out, this is for real! You can now order one for your favourite ‘boat anchor’ guitar!
Richter Matt Heafy Double Strap
Matt Heafy has collaborated with German firm Richter Straps on the design of this new ‘double’ guitar strap. Known from playing in the band Trivium, Heafy plays Gibson and Epiphone Les Paul Custom style guitars, which are known for being pretty heavy. He had this to say about the problem the new strap was designed to solve:
Guitar straps are not ergonomic. The concept of a weight on one side of a trapezius/shoulder joint for an entire musical lifetime is detrimental to the balance of your body.
April fool?
Unfortunately, launching them on 1st April was probably a stupid idea, as the internet thought it was a huge joke! Heafy and Richter were faced with comments like “the uncoolest thing to wear while playing metal”. People told him to go play a lighter guitar. Maybe he should get down the gym and strengthen some of those back and shoulder muscles.
Anyway, you can order your very own double strap from the link below – at a whopping EUR 159! Or, you could buy six months gym membership and get fit. Just saying. I’d go for the latter if it was me.
RRP – EUR 159
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6 responses to “Matt Heafy and Richter launch the Double Strap on April 1st – turns out its legit!”
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“Or, you could buy six months gym membership and get fit. Just saying. I’d go for the latter if it was me.” – yes WAY too expensive, but it sounds like you’re one of the fortunate ones who doesn’t struggle with a crappy spinal issues. Gym alone does not work.
Get a lighter guitar if you have a serious medical condition. I think a chambered guitar would help more than an expensive strap.
Anything much over 10 lbs. is way too heavy for a guitar and completely unnecessary. And I see “fit” people getting messed up with their shoulders and necks using some of the crazy heavy guitars too.
I’ve had the Matt Heafy Signature Epiphone here (he uses the same stock one for most touring), and it really is heavy. But that’s not the problem by itself.
The problem – and this is something that most commenters missed – is that the Epiphone has active EMGs, in other words: the body has zero influence on the sound you get out of the guitar, so there’s no reason at all that his guitar be so heavy. You could literally saw off half the body and the EMGs would give you the exact same sound as before. That’s actually what makes the double-strap so idiotic.
Once I realized that, I sold it. Beautiful guitar, but idiotic.
I’d probably add, that when playing with ‘lots of gain’ it doesn’t really matter what the guitar is to some degree. And, as you say, EMG active pickups will do most of the work for you. So, I suspect the Les Paul Custom shape, is just a preference for him. I’m not a fan of this overly expensive, to a problem of his own making. He could play a chambered Les Paul Custom or perhaps an ESP Eclipse? I’ve owned the EMG loaded Eclipse and it is way lighter than my ’77 Gibson Les Paul Custom is!
His signature Epiphone does have the Axcess heel, which sets it apart from more generic Les Pauls, and in one of his video he does say that’s why he loves this axe. But that’s another can of worms: the one I had had a cracked line across the full width of the heel, and another one I had here – same problem. Forums are full of complaints of this exact issue. It’s not exactly a cracked neck pocket but more a finishing issue, apparently the joint isn’t dry enough when they apply the black coating. Not a stability issue, but a cosmetic issue nonetheless which shouldn’t be present on an Epiphone at this price. I’d be very interested to see if his own guitar has this issue.