A few months back my wife and I welcomed our baby girl. Along with the excitement of having a daughter, I was stoked when I saw what she came with.
Immediately after birth a nurse fitted our daughter with an anti-theft device, basically a small electronic box affixed to the infant’s ankle. If you approach a hospital elevator or stairwell with an infant fitted with this device an alarm sounds and you're immediately chased down by hospital staff. I found this out the hard way (by accident of course ).
Upon inspecting this device my interest quickly shifted to the strap that anchored it to her leg. I have been searching for an effective string dampener and it took about two seconds for me to realize that I had just stumbled across what i've been looking for. The strap is sized perfectly for a guitar neck, it has an elastic stretch material over Velcro on one end, thus allowing it to be fit snuggly. Best of all, the inside of the strap (facing the leg, errr… strings) is made of this medium weight spongy material. I was confident this strap was the perfect dampener and was very anxious to bring it home and test it, of course I had to wait until mom and baby were released from the hospital as I did not want to risk setting of any more alarms.
Upon arriving home I snuck in where my guitars are and confirmed my suspicion. I have tried numerous dampeners in the past and this works far better than anything i've previously tried. It deadens every open string amazingly well.
Here's the dampener:
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And here's our daughter.. not sure if she approves of me hijacking her strap or not?
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Cheers!
Gary