[tdowns]

Originally Posted by Bad Chile

Wall hangers have no effect on the neck. Why?

The tension in the strings amounts to approximately 20 pounds-force (lbf) each. Six strings * 20lbf = 120lbf tension.

This is counteracted by compression in the neck. Remember force = mass * acceleration? Well, if the force is unbalanced, there has to be some acceleration. Since the guitar isn't flying around all the time, the force is balanced and the compression in the neck is 120lbf.

Put the guitar on a wall hanger, though, and the body weight is pulling down. A heavy telecaster is what - 9 pounds? Say 10lbf to make the math easy. So what happens in our static system?

So on a wall hanger the neck has a compression of 120lbf and the body - being pulled down by gravity, puts a tension of 10lbf into the neck. The net resultant is 110lbf in compression. You won't hurt the guitar at all. Note that this analysis ignores the effect of the truss rod, which puts additional compression in the neck and the eccentricity of the forces of both the strings and the truss rod. Don't worry about those.


This is very much like bicycle spokes. A fully built bicycle well has so much tension in each spoke that the full weight of the rider on that wheel is still not enough compression to cause the spoke to go into compression and buckle.

Bad Chile,
You should get post of the week or something for that. The bicycle spoke analogy is golden.