Intonate your Floyd NUT!

[David Collins]

Re: Intonate your Floyd NUT!

I think they compensated the nut forward under the assumption that it would be high and fretting in the lower frets would naturally sharpen the notes. I lowered the nut considerably and this compensation may not have been needed.

Perhaps, but I think you may be giving them too much credit.

I've measured out a lot of fretboards, and see a lot of misplaced nuts in either direction (or even crooked) which were clearly not done by intention or with consistency. Because the nut slot and fret slots are often cut on separate tools, locating the boards precisely seems too much effort in high volume low budget production. I find misplaced nuts to be a much more common problem than most would expect.

 

[Top-L]

Re: Intonate your Floyd NUT!

I find misplaced nuts to be a much more common problem than most would expect.

Thats why I made this thread. I bet there are alot of guitars out there that could be much better with a tiny bit of work. Especially the Floyd clamp guitars, this is going to be really easy to adjust with a nut that screws in.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Intonate your Floyd NUT!

Great posts. I appreciate your explanation of this David.

 

[Top-L]

Re: Intonate your Floyd NUT!

I just finished shimming another nut and it just struck me that the gauge of string will greatly affect the placement of the nut. Surprised none of us brought it up in this discussion.

The nut may be positioned so it will intonate better with 12s than with 9s. This may be why some people unconsciously gravitate to different gauges of strings. Gibson may place an SGs nut so that it sounds best with 12s, Ibanez may place them so that they sound best with 9s.

That being said, it may be that if a person knows a guitar intonates properly against 12s, he would need a shim of "x" thickness. Having done this on a couple guitars, I have added this to my standard setup.

 

[Rockstar216]

Re: Intonate your Floyd NUT!

Thats why replacing or cutting a nut is sometime part of a basic setup when buying a new guitar especially if your using a different gauge of string.