Date sent: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 16:47:33 Paul, think you play guitar. Just read a thing in the new ARMS newsletter about a guitar stand. I'm gonna just copy and paste my letter to another guitarist below. professional guitarist who hasn't been able to play for 3 out of the last 4 years. This person did physical therapy and weight training for the rest of their body and then, when they were stronger, approached the guitar again. To make a long story short, they got this stand for the guitar. You don't have to use a strap w/it and there are "endless ways to tilt and slant the instrument, enabling a decrease of (the dangerous) ulnar deviation (90 angle) in the right hand." Etc. The person who sells these things is Gracie Stands, 7013 Pamelo Dr., West Hills, CA 91307, (818) 883-1307. Paul's Note: Have seen these in a catalog, I forget where. They look interesting, not at all big and bulky. Will see if I can find a distributor. =============== 20 October 1999 I eventually bought one of these. Here's what I wrote about it: Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic Subject: Gracie Stands! This is a micro-review of Gracie guitar stands. I don't see these talked about much and had to buy one on faith when medical problems sent me searching for an alternative to shoulder straps. 1st off, you can reach them at http://www.graciestands.com , although some of the most important content seems to be unreadable except with certain browsers. Go figure. BUt there should be a phone number and when I called it I got to talk with John Gracie himself. Give him a ring and ask for a brochure if the Web site doesn't work. Gracie stands are intended to hold guitars and other instruments "in space" without any straps or connections to you. I got the model that uses an angled support, since it looked easier to set up and more likely to keep it's feet out of the way of your feet. Lemme check . . . OK, I have model SCPSA . I have been very, very pleased. This stand sets up very quickly and is adjustable without tools; the two springloaded clamps that actually secure the guitar operate swiftly and have never "dropped" my guitar. I was concerned that any such bracket would literally come between me and my guitar, making it hard to get physically close to the instrument and thus negating the medical advantages I was seeking. (Have shoulder and neck injury.) Not a problem, though: because the support member leans back and there is nothing against the back of the guitar except a couple little rubber feet peeking around the bottom edge, you can snuggle up to your baby as close as you want. Besides the overall height and lean-back of the entire stand, adjustable with lever-assisted screws, the mount also lets you adjust the neck-tilt-up angle (probably a better word for that) and the roll-back angle of the body, just by nudging it, on the fly if need be. (And it will need be, is my guess.) Now, the interesting thing is FINDING the right height and position to play your instrument. This can take a lot of fiddling. With a strap you do a lot of on-the-fly adjusting of your neck angle that you aren't aware of. Trying to find a fixed position in space that works for all your playing is an education in body awareness, ergonomics, and playing technique. This latter aspect can be seen as a downside to using the stand; on the other hand, I'm completely free to move around behind the guitar and frequently do, which has the salutary effect of varying how my upper body interacts with the guitar. It's possible to find some terrible postures to use with this but equally possible to get some ideal ones. A practical plus for me is that I use this to play in a contemporary worship ensemble in church every Sunday. We have a row of music stands and mike stands for me and the vocalists, and I can set my guitar up at my "place", and simply step up behind it when it's time to play, instead of having to wriggle into my strap, find a place to set the guitar down, etc. Also lets me dress my amplification elements (top-mounted microphone element) and cords around the stand out of the way where I won't goof 'em up. It *does* look a bit odd to see a dreadnaught-sized acoustic guitar apparently "floating" in space. But it's semi-concealed behind the music stands anyway. Obviously, multi-instrumentalists who are switching around mid-song or are stuck with a solidbody electric can nip up behind to play (though I shudder to thing of my solidbody scratching up my acoustic if I tried a stunt like that.) The stand can also be used in sitting positions. Instead, I also popped for a Hamre Neck-up ( http://www.neckup.com ) for when I'm rehearsing sitting down. Nice little widget itself. In any case: way too early to know if this will help out my health but at least there's nothing scrunching my poor brachial plexus when I play anymore. Also, I like the fact that I can leave my guitar "floating" in our living room and walk up to noodle on it any time without digging it out of the case. The model I got ran $130 . The serious dollars are why I didn't get one when I first heard about them years ago. But serious pain and the threat to my ability to play, plus some dollars from our church, made me spring for it. 15 July 2001 Additional notes: the Gracie has proved itself in the long run too, although from time to time I'll find myself adopting odd postures behind my guitar that are terribly unbalanced, and unneccessary. I think it takes more attention than using a strap but the payoff is worth it. A couple of months back some unexpected dollars came my way and were rapidly converted into a new solidbody electric guitar (Ibanez RG570, a Strat-ish shaped thingie.) It's a wonderful instrument and not unusually heavy, but I've been trying different strap options and I know it could be a problem. Tonight I set up my Gracie stand and found some chunks of fairly stiff foam rubber (NOT Styrofoam, and not open-cell foam rubber. Pretty rigid stuff.) By some miracle, two chunks were the right thickness, and rigidity, and even had a couple of fortuitous little notches, so that I was able to put them against the back brackets of the Gracie and have it hold my solid-body just as solid and comfy as you please. Boy, there's a certain comfort to playing a guitar when none of the effort of your hands and arms is tied up at all in supporting the instrument, only in fretting and playing. I can tell that finding that perfect positions gonna take some experimenting but I can tell you I'm going to have this setup working for next weekend. Oh, and I'm going to have to come up with a cord with a right-angle plug because my output jack rests on the stand in this configuration. A quick nip over to Gracie's website and I see he's got model SCPSE, a slant-column stand for solidbody. There ya go, no foam rubber needed, unless like me you only want one stand for both acoustic and electric. ======================================== 19 December 2001 Thought I'd add a comment on the longevity of the Gracie stand. These units are plenty robust and well designed, but I've had two areas where things do wear out: - there are two bolts with lever handles that are used to set the main riser height and the stand tilt-back. Once set, I've not found I need to change the height when I'm folding the stand for transport or storage but the screw that secures the legs gets tightened or loosened with every such use, and the screw threads do strip out. When the first shelled out I stole the height screw to replace it and put in a knob-handled screw for the height: when the second wore out, I fabricated my own replacement by bending a screw and covering it's "handle" with shrink-wrap. Both times it helped to clean out the threads on the leg frame with a screw tap. - As you might expect, the little rubber nubs that hold the guitar can wear or come loose but only one has done so, and a little glue fixed it up. I figure they'll all need replacing sometime. None of this means it's flimsy: it gets hard use and I'm still satisfied. -- paul marxhausen ```` ``````` ````````````` ```````````` ```````````` `````````` `` ` ` ` ` ` university of nebraska - lincoln ` ` ` `` ` ` `` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` grace ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` happens `