Best guitar straps for beginners

Buy a 2 inch Polypro strap for about nine dollars. If the guitar is an acoustic with no strap button at the neck, buy the Acoustic version instead for about eleven. That is the whole decision for most readers, and the surprising part is that the cheap strap is not a compromise: it adjusts across 31 inches, which is more than any other strap on this page, including the one that costs four times as much.

Every pick states its Starter Path band, and we have not handled any of them — the method is on how we pick. Widths, adjustment ranges, materials and the dimensions of the acoustic loop are all published figures, cited at the bottom. Three of the four come from Ernie Ball directly rather than a retailer, which is unusual and worth saying, because the retailer listings for the same strap disagree with each other.

The number nobody checks: adjustment range

A guitar strap has exactly one job, and the specification that decides whether it can do that job is the only one most listings bury.

Here are the maker’s published figures for the three Ernie Ball straps on this page, which are directly comparable because they come from the same source:

Polypro, 2 inch — 41 to 72 inches. Thirty-one inches of range. About nine dollars.

Acoustic, 2 inch — 43 to 75 inches. Thirty-two inches of range. About eleven dollars.

Neoprene Comfort, 2.5 inch — 46 to 54 inches. Eight inches of range. About thirty-five dollars.

Read those again in order. The cheapest strap on the page adjusts across almost four times the span of the dearest one. That is not a quality difference and it is not a trick: a padded strap is built around a cushioned center section that cannot pass through a buckle, so only the tail adjusts. But the consequence is concrete. A ten-year-old or a short adult who needs the strap at 42 inches can physically use the nine dollar strap and cannot use the thirty-five dollar one at all.

This is why we put the padded strap in the overspend band on a page where it is only the third most expensive thing: the band is about what the purchase costs the player, not the wallet.

The problem most beginner acoustics have

Before buying any strap, turn the guitar over and look at the heel of the neck, where the neck joins the body.

A great many inexpensive acoustics have a strap button on the bottom of the body and nothing at all up there. A standard strap has two ends and needs two buttons, so on a guitar like that it simply cannot be fitted. People discover this after the strap arrives, conclude the strap is wrong, and return it.

The maker’s own solution is published and specific: the Acoustic version#ad carries an extended leather loop measuring 6 1/2 by 3/4 inches, stated by Ernie Ball to be for instruments without a neck heel strap button. The loop goes behind the nut at the headstock, under the strings rather than over them, and ties off. It is the standard solution, it costs two dollars more than the ordinary strap, and it works.

The alternatives, honestly: a luthier will fit a second strap button, which costs more than the strap and is a sensible thing to ask for during a setup if the guitar is getting one anyway. Or you can tie a shoelace through the loop end of a normal strap, which genuinely works and looks exactly like a shoelace tied to a guitar.

The only strap failure that costs money

Nothing on a strap wears out in a way a beginner will notice. One thing does go wrong, and it goes wrong suddenly: the slotted end works its way off the strap button and the guitar falls.

There are two fixes and the price difference between them is the useful fact. Rubber strap blocks#ad are flexible washers that slip over the strap buttons already on the guitar; Ernie Ball states they fit most strap button types and provide a tight fit without any modification to your guitar. They cost a few dollars and go on in seconds.

Locking strap buttons are the other answer, and Ernie Ball’s own Super Locks are nickel plated steel with a 360 degree connection — and the published installation spec is a pilot hole 7/64 inch in diameter and one and a half inches deep. You are drilling the guitar. For a touring player whose instrument is swinging around, that is obviously worth it. For somebody a month into learning, on an instrument that might be rented, borrowed or resold, it is not. Buy the rubber.

The picks

The Ernie Ball Polypro in black#ad is the strap to buy. Two inches of polypropylene webbing that the maker says will not stretch or bleed color, machine stitched to leather ends, a Delrin buckle, and 41 to 72 inches of adjustment. The non-stretch claim matters more than it sounds: a strap that stretches lowers the guitar by an inch or two over months, and the player compensates without noticing. Buy it if the guitar has two strap buttons, which covers every electric and many acoustics. Skip it if the acoustic has no neck button — no amount of adjustment fixes that — or if you are carrying a heavy instrument for hours, because flat webbing with no padding does dig in.

The Acoustic version#ad is the same strap with the loop described above, and 43 to 75 inches of adjustment. The published loop dimension is why it is here rather than a generic lace: you can see it will reach. Buy it if the heel of the neck has no button. Skip it if the guitar does have two buttons, where the loop is dead weight hanging at the headstock. One honest note: on a very light guitar a headstock loop pulls the neck slightly and some players dislike the balance.

The Levy’s MC8#ad is the upgrade that is actually about the strap rather than about padding. Two inch cotton webbing, genuine suede ends, a tri-glide adjuster, pin-hole stitching, adjustable up to 58 inches, made in Nova Scotia by a company that makes nothing else. The suede ends are the real argument: suede has friction against a strap button in a way polypropylene and finished leather do not, so it is less likely to walk off on its own. Buy it if you want the strap to outlast the first guitar. Skip it if the player is a child — and here is the con we could not resolve: nobody publishes the MC8’s minimum length. Both Ernie Ball straps publish both ends of their range. We are not going to guess a number for a strap whose whole point is that it fits.

The Neoprene Comfort strap#ad is on this page as the instructive mistake, and it is not a bad product — it is a good product aimed at somebody who is not a beginner. 2.5 inches of cushioned neoprene, and Ernie Ball is admirably specific that it is for redistributing instrument weight and is particularly suited to players with existing ailments, aches or chronic pain. That is a real need and this genuinely answers it. Buy it if the instrument is heavy or the shoulder already hurts, because a strap that shortens a practice session costs more than thirty-five dollars. Skip it if this would be a first strap: eight inches of adjustment range against thirty-one, for four times the money, under a guitar that weighs seven pounds.

What we did not list, and why

Locking straps. A strap with a self-locking end is a genuinely clever answer to the falling-guitar problem and we wanted to include one. The obvious candidate is in stock at about twenty dollars, and we could not confirm its published width or adjustment range from any source we trust: the maker’s site would not serve us the page, the part number does not resolve at any retailer, and the dimensions dealers do publish are for a different material in the same family. This page is built on published measurements, so rather than quote a figure we cannot stand behind, we have left the category described and unpinned. The rubber blocks solve the same problem for a fraction of the money anyway.

Drilled locking buttons. Covered above. Right answer for a performer, wrong answer for somebody who has owned a guitar for a month, and the published pilot-hole spec is the reason.

Three inch padded straps. There are good ones, typically around forty-five dollars with a wide neoprene pad. The width argument is real for a bass or a heavy solid body. It is five times the price of the strap we recommend, for a benefit that starts mattering at a weight a beginner acoustic does not reach. If the player has moved to bass, revisit it then.

Unbranded multi-packs. Four straps for the price of one, and no published width, no adjustment range, no material beyond “nylon”. The entire argument of this page is that two numbers decide the purchase, and these listings publish neither. You also cannot reorder the one you liked.

Leather straps. Beautiful, heavy, expensive, and they need breaking in. They are a decision for somebody who knows what they want a strap to feel like, which is not a first purchase. The cotton-and-suede MC8#ad is the sensible middle.

Straps with built-in pick holders. The maker sells one and it is cheap. We left it off because the reason beginners lose picks is not that they lack somewhere to put them — it is that picks are a consumable and the answer is to own a dozen.