Hello.
Setting up the tL1
I want to remove the nut and shave it down to lower the action.
Is this possible without neck damage?
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Hello.
Setting up the tL1
I want to remove the nut and shave it down to lower the action.
Is this possible without neck damage?
Yep,
You knock it out sideways , there's a couple of good YouTube videos out there if you look.
It would be preferable to increase the depth of the neck slots in situ and then lower the overall nut height with files, sandpaper and polishing compound, but it does require having suitable nut files. Worth getting if you are going to make more guitars and set up your existing ones, but the good ones are expensive. I just recently replaced my cheap set and it was over £100/A$170 for a set of 10 files by Hosco.
To remove the nut, if there is lacquer, paint or finish running up to (and even on) the nut, then score round the base of the nut with a sharp knife first to avoid any of the finish chipping off. Then get a flat-bladed screwdriver with a blade that's almost the same width as the nut, place it against the nut and knock it out sideways using gentle taps of a hammer. This has always worked very well for me in the past with no problems. However, if you know the nut has been stuck on with epoxy or another very strong glue (because you've done it yourself), or you aren't making any progress after a few taps (even a small amount of movement means it's shifting), then to avoid pulling off chunks of neck with the nut, you'll need to do it the hard way and cut it out in pieces. Cut down the middle of the nut (lengthways) with a hacksaw, until you reach the bottom of the nut. This will then give you room to try and cut down the sides on the nut with a sharp knife, and then using a sharp chisel to separate each half of the nut in turn from the edges of the fingerboard. You may even have to file the whole nut out. Nuts don't need this amount of holding in place, and Titebond/PVA glue is fine.
If the nut is too narrow for the slot to be held in place when un-glued, then the answer isn't stronger glue, it's another, wider nut.
You'll want to clean the residual glue off the nut and out of the slot before re-gluing. To re-glue once you've lowered the nut enough, just use a smear of Titebond/PVA wood glue and either clamp it in place or hold it in place with string tension. Make sure it's sitting correctly in the slot, and not poking out a bit at either end. Wipe off any excess glue with a damp cloth. Then leave it clamped for 24 hours before using it.
Removing the nut and filing/sanding down the bottom requires a lot of gentle sanding, and constant re-testing the height in situ. It's all too easy to go too far. If your string heights above the 1st fret are already fine, but you feel the nut is sticking up too much, then you'll need to work on the top of the nut, not the bottom.
If the strings are currently too high above the 1st fret, then it's best to first measure the gap with some feeler gauges. To start with, aim for a gap of 0.03" (0.76mm). So if your lowest string is 0.05" (1.27mm) above the 1st fret, then you know you need to take off a global 0.02" (0.5mm) from the saddle bottom to start with. Using a set of digital calipers to measure the height as you go helps here. You should be able to do this quite quickly. This will still leave you with some fine tuning as (unless you are setting it up as a slide guitar) you'll want a final gap of around 0.02" (0.5mm) on the bottom E and 0.01" (0.25mm) on the top E, which means that you need to take into consideration the original nut slot depths, as you'll probably need to file the base of the saddle at an angle to achieve this (this is why it's easier to deepen the nut slots from the top, than taking it off the bottom). There is no guarantee that the original nut slot depths would have been suitably staggered to allow you to simply take off a consistent depth from the bottom of the saddle to get the optimum nut slot height for all strings.
When sanding the bottom of the nut, it's important to keep it flat against the sandpaper. So I suggest fixing the sandpaper of a flat surface using some double-sided tape (or tape it at the edges to hold it in place, hold the nut against a piece of wood you know has a square edge, and sand the nut and wood together, always keeping the nut pressed against the wood to keep it square.
On a general note, on Fender style necks, if the board is a 'veneer' type (as opposed to the 'slab' type), then the nut is also curved at the bottom, often with a small downward pointing locating tang in the centre. This tang fits in a small hole within the nut slot.
Take more care with this curved nut type, as if the nut does have a tang, you obviously don't want to hit it too hard and have the tang damage the fretboard, so I'd suggest tapping it lightly from alternate ends until it's loose enough to pull out with pliers, or it simply falls out of its own accord. There's normally enough slack in the locating hole to allow the nut to move slightly sideways, which is all you need to free it form the glue.
But if the nut won't move and is too well stuck in and you do have to saw and chisel it out on a veneer neck, then bear in mind the curved fretboard, and that the truss rod slot is right below the bottom of the fretboard. You'll need to maintain the curve when sawing your slot and not simply saw straight down from side-to-side.
'Slab' on the left, 'Veneer' on the right:
Attachment 15320
Curved nut with tang:
Attachment 15322
Easiest way is to remove the nut, clean up the slot and then sand the bottom of the nut.
A few swipes on the sandpaper, then check the action height.
Repeat until you have the desired action height.
Without the correct tools and experience, deepening slots can lead to problems....
I've found that the nut slot heights on pre-slotted nuts are rarely that level with each other, so unless you tackle the slots, you're unlikely to have the best nut set-up you can achieve.
And you've got to start sometime, or you'll never get that experience. Replacement nuts aren't expensive, so at some point you've got to go for it, as long as you are prepared to make a few mistakes and start again.
Spot on DB. Easier to start again on another nut if you stuff things up but not so easy if the slot gets too deep on the fret board as it is too hard to add wood and shims. Acknowledge that a small amount of sanding/tidying up is usually required but have found most replacement pre slotted nuts to be about the same height so digging any deeper may end up in tears if not too careful.Quote:
Originally Posted by dingobass
Here's a way to check if you've got the nut-height correct, first of al get yourself a 30cm/300mm Steel Ruler as used by metal workers for marking out sheet metal, you can buy these from your local Bunnings shop, next place the Steel Ruler on the neck so that the edge of it is touching the frets, and it is standing perpendicular to the frets, then slide it up the neck so that the end of the Steel Ruler (where the zero mark is) just touches the front edge of the nut and the Ruler is sitting on the first few frets after the nut, you'll know when you have the nut height correct when the bottom of each string-slot lines up with the edge of the Steel Ruler, using this method, I have been able to get the nut heights on all my guitars so that the action at the first-fret is nice and comfortably low, but buzz-free.