Beautiful work!
NWGBD
- Thread starter Don O
- Start date
Beautiful work!
OP
Thanks. Gonna spend some time on the nut given all your detailed work.
OP
I put a drop of wood glue on the screw threads before inserting them.
On the Fender style nuts, don't worry about the string spacing being uneven, as long as you have alignment between nut and tuning key...
We need to have a nut cutting party for that problem child guitar you have...
OP
OP
This one is going to be a little funky since there is no tuner post radius. The string goes right to the center of the tuner hole.
OP
Yea, the Dean Zelinsky is gonna need some loving after I get the basement finished.
I think it will still line up good...
Keep in mind that Warmoth is notorious for lateral string misalignment.
Here's a Tusq XL Nut, CNC machined by Warmoth, as installed on my new Warmoth neck.
Here's the breakdown:
Low 'E' turning towards truss rod
'A' turning towards tuners (note distance between 'E' and 'A' decreasing)
D/G/b & e: All turning up towards tuning keys.
TIP: View this image with your phone tilted away from you...almost parallel to the floor and concentrate on sighting-along the string path at the nut and the misalignment should "jump out" at you.
Most setup guys I know never see it, then blame the problem on tuners. When locking tuners don't fix it, they offer to rout for a Floyd. Piss poor Luthier work won't be fixed with locking tuners...IMHO anyways.
Moving on...
The Warmoth method of CNC machining their nuts is awesome, but there can be no "standard spacing measurement," because tuner placement and neck width are constant variables.
The misalignment through the nut was dramatic. You could not use the tremolo, even for mild vibrato.
Under magnification, you could see the strings move sideways in the nut when the bard was depressed. After a month of gigging 4-5 nights a week, you could see how much lateral wear was in the nut.
(NOTES: On any stock Fender Tremolo, when the bar is depressed, the coils of the low 'E' and 'G' string start to unwind slightly on the post, and this will happen even with locking tuners. As the string coils relax around the post, the strings rise up out of the nut. As they come back to pitch, the string will saw its way through the slot in a natural action that tries to correct the misalignment, so you will typically have greater issues with the low 'E' and the 'G' strings returning to pitch, but all are affected by misalignment.)
After a little over a month, the 'D' string had worn the Graph Tech Tusq XL nut slot out until it was touching the first fret.
Graph Tech looked at the photos and basically told me their nut wasn't designed for daily use!!!!!
So, we call up Warmoth. I tell them what's up and send photos.
Immediately, Warmoth blamed the Gotoh SD-91 Vintage Tuners. Can you believe that??? You can see the strings getting pinched in the nut, and they blame the tuners???
So, I sent them a video of me divebombing, with a dial indicator showing zero movement, then I sent them a second video of me divebombing a colleague's 1964 Fender Stratocaster - with a stock tremolo - (after I had performed a setup and made a bone nut for it) and it stayed in perfect tune, even after repeated 11 semitone divebombing attacks.
What was Warmoth's answer??? Just make the slots wider!!!! A typical hack!!! Ok, for fun I did this and it made zero difference. A wider slot still won't fix misalignment.
And here you can see how extreme the down angle is on the low 'E,' which I corrected by putting a long post, Gibson/Kluson tuner on it:
The ugly, bit functional, modified Gibson/Kluson tuner:
Warmoth offered to send me a replacement Graph Tech Tusq XL nut, and I told them, "I appreciate that, but I don't want anything from you, except that you correct this problem of using a 'theoretic string spacing' measurement..."
I seriously doubt they will change anything because they swear it's not a problem...but it's not just a Warmoth problem, it's a common problem on many guitars.
Once you get it (the nut alignment, down angle, depth/smoothness) right, my 6 screw Fender Tremolo works as well as my Floyd Rose Pro 1000.
Now, because the tuner holes are never in the same place on any two necks, some guitars suffer more from this than others, but I routinely see open (non locking) tremolos - on a variety of guitars - that absolutely will not stay in tune because of this. Period.
One of the worst cases of nut misalignment I ever saw was on a PRS Custom 24 'Private Stock,' a $10,000 guitar that would stay in tune if you used the tremolo. Ridiculous.
Hope this shed some light on the subject...
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syscokid
Ambassador of War & Peace
This analysis was well done... Nice job! So, if the holes for the tuners are not perfectly positioned, then the nut slots will always need to be compromised?
SIx String Chef
Ambassador of Taste
Don, that is one abolutely GORGEOUS guitar, congratulations! Impeccable taste and amazing work... What bridge will you be using?
Right!
Here's a USA Strat with issues. Believe it or not, the USA Stratocasters are the worst for this condition, because Fender uses pre-slotted nuts in Corona.
While this is shown on a Squire, I see it all the time on the MIM and USA models, but this is a great example of what I see regularly:
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RVA
Ambassador
So ultimately, the choice to align the nut with the existing tuner position for a straight string pull means that the trem will be stable, but the string spacing will be less than optimal. It seems like the best thing to do for home builds is buy a neck that does not have pre-drilled tuner holes. These will be hard to find though.
Confronted with this issue, I would choose optimal spacing since I do not use a trem.
Very nice breakdown, Robert. And with diagrams!! Thanks
SIx String Chef
Ambassador of Taste
Thank you for the explanation, Robert! Got a couple of questions: Do we try to correct such a problem at the nut (get rid of the original nut and cut a new one) to somehow better align with the theoretical red lines, or to align with the tuners actual positions? What process do we have to follow to determine and measure the angle / position at which each slot will have to be cut on the new nut if that is the way to go? That'd be something really useful to know (especially in my case). Thanks!
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OP
Six, it’s a Gotoh 510TS. When I buy finished Warmoth bodies I buy the trem from them too so they can install the studs.
OP
Robert, I certainly understand all the geometry, but doesn’t it all come down to friction? If the nut had 0 friction (impossible to obtain) I’d think the geometry wouldn’t matter. I have 2 Strats with the LSR roller nut, I’m gonna go look at them today. Seems like a good compromise in trying to have prefect geometry.
