String Nut Questions

[Old Fart]

Bruce is a bit like Jupiter, gravitationally speaking. I think many of these questions would end up in the Basses forum if not for Bruce holding court here. I have string nut questions:

1) Material. Bleached bone. Unbleached bone. Tusq. Fossilized mammoth tusk. Neutronium. What material is best and why?

2) Are nut slot centers spaced equally? If so, then there will be less distance between the E and A strings compared to the D and G strings due to their widths.

3) II think I would like an 11 mm string spacing at the nut, which would leave about 5 mm spacing between the FB edge and the centers of the E and G strings (nut width is 1-11/16" / 42.8625 mm). I don't love strings too close to FB edge. Will this be odd or undesirable functionally or aesthetically?

4) This Warmoth neck has a stated 10" radius. StewMac nuts come in 9.5" radius. Will I need to modify this nut blank to fit the 10" radius? If so, is this just a matter of using the neck as a sanding block?

5) For me, slotting nuts is time-consuming. I use feeler gauges to measure the distance between a tensioned string and the first fret with the string fretted between frets 2 and 3. Many iterations. I'm done when I've got something in the neighborhood of 0.002" to 0.005". I can't think of a way to improve upon this method. Can you?

I know this is a lot to cover but I didn't want to start five threads and it would take me a LONG time of Searching to get this information.

For your entertainment, here are pics of two nuts I made. Neither of them have the 5 mm spacing between the FB edge and string slot center that I am considering now.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

As for 2, it's (like many others, including 1, and a zero fret which is what Bruce mostly builds makes them largely irrelevant) a choice different people do different ways. There isn't one right and one wrong way, there's just different ways. You see both equal centers and equal spaces on different instruments. Some people like each one. Not too many like both, but most can adapt to either, even if they prefer the other.

For 3, without bothering to do the search (you could) IIRC 3mm-1/8" is about as small as is recommended for board edge spacing, so 5mm is likely fine. Having done the search, it also gets into 2: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/lo...spacing-or-proportional.1640521/post-28202931

 

[Queue]

Each of these questions could be a thread in itself.

#4 depends on a lot of things. I've found that some nut slots are radiused, and some are flat. Replacement nuts vary as well. I've often just started with the appropriate sized chunk of Tusq XL and gone from there.

 

[gregmon79]

Yeah there's a lot to unpack here. One the things that helped me with your #1 query is if you drop the nut on a table top or kitchen counter, the ringing/resonance it makes when it hits can tell you a lot of how it will react to your bass. IME anyway. The crappy plastic ones that come on a lot of cheaper basses for instance, they just drop dead when they hit the counter. It's pretty obvious. A tusq nut will bounce a little and you'll hear it ring out for the most part. It's a pretty neat test.

 

[ddm0502]

I can only answer a few of them, I'll let the more experienced answer the rest.

For material, really anything you want. It only has a tone affect on the open strings and even then is minor in my experience. If you go with bone, I like unbleached for a few reasons. Most importantly, bleached bone is more brittle and harder to cleanly work with. Aesthetically, I think unbleached bone looks better against the natural wood of the headstock and fingerboard.

Regarding string spacing, I'm a strong believer of measuring center to center. First, it's easier to lay out, just measure equal amounts, no need to calculate based on string diameter. Most importantly, your finger is reaching for the center of the string when you fret the note, and its the center of the string that contacts the fret. Measuring the gap as edge of edge might make the spacing look better, but it will feel off.

 

[Old Fart]

To facilitate easy input:

1) Unbleached bone

2) Equal, not proportional, spacing

3) 5 mm spacing at the FB edges does not seem extreme or unusual, AFAIK, leaving 11 mm string spacing

4) Nevermind. This nut slot is flat at the bottom. Thank you Warmoth!

5) I should just read up on nut slotting. There has to be a fast way to get near to fret-height. Once there, going slow and measuring with feeler gauges seems prudent to me.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

I’ve done a few nuts, brass, Tusq, and, oddly enough, Bakelite, which was for a Ric bass. I tried bone once, hated it. What a stink! Of those I actually liked the Bakelite Ric nut best. It’s hard, sort of self lubricating, and polishes up nicely. Brass nuts the most difficult and time consuming, but they look great. Honestly, I can’t feel the difference between even and proportional nut slot spacing, what’s more important to me is getting the distance from edge of board to center of E and G slots right.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Hey Old Fart;

There are at least 20 threads on each of those questions, explaining all the options in great detail, over in the Hardware, Setup & Repair section. That's what that section of TalkBass is all about: Fixing and installing the hardware parts on a bass, and doing the setup. Working with screwdrivers and wrenches mostly. The grey line between there and Luthier's Corner is when you start making wood and metal chips.

Installing nuts and filing nut slots is a major topic over there. We Luthiers often help out and offer technical advise on those threads. I've personally written at least 50 posts in the Hardware, Setup & Repair sections, going into great detail about the techniques nut string spacing, cutting nut slots, zero frets, etc. There's no point in repeating them all here.

I recommend that you search in that section with the terms Nut Material, Nut String Spacing, and Nut Slots.

 

[Old Fart]

Will do. Thank you, Bruce.

 

[Low Main]

I'm never in a hurry to buy pricey stuff from Stew Mac, but their nut slotting String Spacing Rule is an essential tool for me.

I mostly make nuts out of wood and I rely on diamond needle rasps from jeweler's suppliers to rough out the nut slots. It goes quickly.

Unless the bass has vintage value, if it has a bound neck, I cut notches in the binding and bring the nut through to the full overall width of the neck. I got tired of replacing nuts on Jazz basses that had the outer corners broken off because the nuts were captured inside the binding and there was very little nut material outboard of the E and G string slots.

 

[Max Bogosity]

The way I was taught to get the slot depth close by eye is to fret at the second fret, then look at the distance between the bottom of the string and the first fret. The closer it gets, the closer the bottom of the slot is to the height of the first fret. If you hit zero, you might have gone too far.