Smooth Nut

Last week I broke a nut...I'm going to give everyone a chance to make some funny comment in there head here.


The nut was on the head stock of my twelve string guitar. It happened while I was changing the strings. It was just old and frail. The lower octave A got stuck and when I pulled on it the nut snapped. So I immediately went to the music shop and inquired the resident Luthier about fixing my Fender. He said it would be approximately a fortnight until the guitar was ready. I scoffed and demanded he sell me the necessary parts to properly fix it. He did. I left.

Twenty minutes later I returned, believing the parts person to have improperly filled my order. The nut was slightly too long and too high. I was told— which confirmed my suspicions—that the nut had to be shaved. He recommended a gentle abrasion tool such as a nail file or light sand paper. When I returned home I plugged in my variable speed, limited edition, Fifty Year Anniversary Dremel, loaded up a sand paper bit and went to town. Finally, I got what I thought was close to the original shape of the nut. I re-strung the guitar, cleaned the head, applied a judicious amount of white glue in the inlay and jammed the nut home.

I tuned the guitar and started to play a C7 and noticed that something wasn't right. The action was way too high and my A and B strings were registering in tune but playing sharp on the first fret. I inspected the old nut and determined that I had not taken enough height off the new nut. I then had to loosen every string, gently tap the nut out of its inlay and proceed to sand it down some more. This time I decided to use the metal grinding bit. This bit chewed through the plastic, making short work of the job. I smoothed it off on some sand paper and again went through all the motions of tuning. This time the action was better but not great. The A string was a registering 15 cents sharp at the first fret and the B string near thirty. I tightened the truss rod a quarter turn and let it rest over night.

The next day things were the same. I made more truss rod adjustments but nothing changed. Two days ago I put the Dremel to work again. I loosened and moved the A and B strings aside and carefully sanded down the saddle in the nut so the string would be lower, ergo flatting the string at the first fret. It worked a little. At this point I got scared and decided to not mess up this guitar. I took it back to the music shop and hired them to perform the job I tried to do myself. I got very close, but there are many factors involved in properly achieving near perfect pitch.

I tried to save time and money and ended up spending more of both. On the bright side I don't think that they will have to remove and replace the nut I just put on. But they will have to adjust it, and the truss rod, and possibly put new strings on as well.

Awesome.