Nuts for nuts

[alex1fly]

Thanks all. Glad I'm not nuts for thinking this nut is nuts.

[PDC]

I went down this road a couple (few) years back when I went on a crazy guitar building phase. I had moved away from locking tremolos and was obsessed with learning how to maximize tuning stability with non-locking trems. I played with the welding tip cleaners with limited success and finally broke down and bought a set of nice nut files from Stew Mac. Even with high quality files, it is possible - easy - to ruin a nut blank. That one stroke too many and the string is riding on the first fret, or too steep a ramp off the back of the nut and you get vibration or ‘pinging’ between the nut and tuning post when playing the open string. But I really had more fun than frustration teaching myself how to do it right. (Nut blanks aren’t horribly expensive.) I totally agree that if you do not plan on doing quite a bit of this, it really doesn’t pay to buy a full set of files. But my nearest trusted repairman is about 40 miles away and backlogged by about 14 days. So impatience got the better of me. Similar story with my soldering skills. Building guitars from used necks and bodies on Reverb and eBay has been a really enjoyable hobby. Now I need to start letting some of my earlier builds go to slap a few more together!!!

[ehdwuld]

I went down this road a couple (few) years back when I went on a crazy guitar building phase. I had moved away from locking tremolos and was obsessed with learning how to maximize tuning stability with non-locking trems. I played with the welding tip cleaners with limited success and finally broke down and bought a set of nice nut files from Stew Mac. Even with high quality files, it is possible - easy - to ruin a nut blank. That one stroke too many and the string is riding on the first fret, or too steep a ramp off the back of the nut and you get vibration or ‘pinging’ between the nut and tuning post when playing the open string. But I really had more fun than frustration teaching myself how to do it right. (Nut blanks aren’t horribly expensive.) I totally agree that if you do not plan on doing quite a bit of this, it really doesn’t pay to buy a full set of files. But my nearest trusted repairman is about 40 miles away and backlogged by about 14 days. So impatience got the better of me. Similar story with my soldering skills. Building guitars from used necks and bodies on Reverb and eBay has been a really enjoyable hobby. Now I need to start letting some of my earlier builds go to slap a few more together!!!

Ya know I think a set of feeler gauges laid against the nut , and between the first fret and the nut
may prevent the too deep scenario

As far as angle too sharply down towards the tuner
I am not sure about that

Again the feeler gauges may help there as well

I have thought about getting an inexpensive Chinese set off Amazon

Still debating that
For the practice thing it may be just fine

[posite63]

Super glue and baking soda works wonders for filling slots that are too deep.

Sent from my LG-H830 using Tapatalk

[Adieu]

If you recut your own, no need to spend ANY money on nut blanks.

Corian (= synthetic countertop samples from Home Depot etc.) is a popular nut material. And free samples are free and will make more nuts than you'll ever do in a lifetime

So feel free to learn, experiment, and screw up however many

[alex1fly]

I put an American core PRS nut on this guitar and it seems to fit great and fix many of the problems with buzzing, intonation is better, etc. $26 shipped for two: https://us.prsaccessories.com/

[ehdwuld]

I put an American core PRS nut on this guitar and it seems to fit great and fix many of the problems with buzzing, intonation is better, etc. $26 shipped for two: https://us.prsaccessories.com/

There
do that