neck-"heavy" Soapbar SE

[high class slim]

I love me $400 soapbar special, but it's so light that it's really neck-"heavy." Have to hold the neck up when I play. I'd love to find a solution...my ideas so far are:

1-lighter tuners. Does anyone know if:

the Soapbar SE tuners are particularly heavy?

the mini-schallers, mini-grovers or mini-gotohs are lighter than regular size tuners?

the PRS "low mass" phase II tuners the lightest around? I saw the thread where someone put Phase II's on their Santana SE.

2-put some weight into the control cavity. This is kind of crazy though!

3-find a heavier Soapbar SE!

I'd appreciate any suggestions...thanks in advance!

[Bill McDowell]

One of the simplest ways is to get a black cloth/canvas strap that is "rough" on the outside - so it sticks to your clothing a bit (and doesn't slide).

[Mike Dresch]

One other thing you can do is reposition the top strap button a little closer to the neck joint. We did this on a chambered Warmoth Les Paul of my friends and it made a huge difference. If you do decide to do this, you can duck tape the strap into place temporarily until you find a place that balances the best before you commit to drilling any new holes.

[Jon Silberman]

I provide two suggestions in your identical TGP thread.

[Brian]

I swapped out my SSE tuners for phase IIs, I don't know about their weight, but sustain definitely improved.

[high class slim]

thank you for all the responses! I'm going to swap in new tuner--open-back sperzels or the phase IIs as a first attempt.

I did a little experiment--I unscrewed the metal buttons from the tuners and that already made an improvement in the balance. My plan now is to find tuners that weigh 50% as much as normal tuners (the open-back Sperzels are supposedly half the weight), and use faux ivory buttons that weigh a fraction of metal buttons. This should be a good start I think.

I will also get a new strap. I don't know about moving the strap button closer to the neck joint--it's already very very close. Moving it more than 1/4" closer won't leave enough space for the strap.

Thanks again for the thoughts and I will eventually report on the results...