Why am I having such a hard time, finding 42mm wide flat bottom pre slotted Bass guitar bone nuts, its driving me nuts (pardon the pun) plenty of plastics out there, but I don't want plastics, Brass hahaha for god sake give me a break.
Does anyone know where I may be able to track these down in Australia, I can get 38mm, no problem there even 43mm. I have a PBASS and a JBASS both are 42mm wide at the nut slot. Been playing for awhile on my Basses, but never really had to deal with replacing the nuts before, I didn't realize there is such a variation.
So I have a question !!!
Are 43mm bass nuts a standard width for a 42mm wide neck and its just a mater of centering it then filling it down to suit the neck ????
Its probably a silly question, but I have found that there are 42mm wide flat bottom bone nuts, just not in Australia unless I want to pay a luthier $80 to have one made up from a blank. No thanks, i'll put up with the plastics before doing that, no offence to luthiers, but I just cant justify a $5 ready made nut to having one made.
ANYHOOT,
hope someone has an answer for me, thank your mother for the rabbits.
43 mm should be fine. That's the standard width for a P-bass nut...and unless you special order it's the width for all PB 4 string bass nuts, IIRC.
The US nut is supposed to be 1 11/16"...which is just under 43mm. Generally you want the nut to be just a hair wider than the slot so you can sand it down to exact dimensions.
...but at 42mm I'd be a little worried that it's too narrow.
If push comes to shove you can buy ANY bone nut that is bigger than your slot and sand it down to size. Keep the plastic nut and use it to know where to put the string slots.
I have made nuts from bone blanks, which are very cheap. It's a ton of sanding, but it only takes a couple of hours tops while you listen to a podcast or audio book ;-)
Thanks fender3x Ive also been to that site, for some reason wont allow 2 nuts in the same order, not sure if thats and indication of lack of stock or not, thats overseas as well so to order 2 I have to make 2 seperate orders then pay shipping costs twice, out of the question but thanks for the feedback.
Ive decided to order 4 @ 43mm blanks from real tone music in Australia, they seem to be the go to for a lot of things like this unfortunately not the pre slotted versions. So will be doing a bit of filing and sanding to shape, now not having the correct luthier files for the slots will test me, hence the reason for getting 4 blanks, I have trimmed pre slotted before using different grade sand paper and I have even used old strings for correct diameters with some good results. Can't justify the cost of buying the files but looking ahead and the work I have done without correct tools is something I may now need to look into. I will be keeping the old nuts I have a small collection of them now, will use those as a template.
Ive looked at that very site, but they are in Canada its something like $30 to $60 shipping depending how soon you want them then the cost of the nut, I was hoping for something a bit closer to home and far less exspensive. Thanks for the input.
Further to my earlier post, I should add that the Graphtech Tusq XL was pretty much a perfect fit in my Pitbull P-Bass build. I sanded a little off the thickness so it fitted just snugly in the spot, as well a a little from the bottom to get the string height in the zone.
I did my first one from scratch. LOTS of sanding, but it's not particularly difficult. Having a few extra is also a good thing.
If it's pre-slotted, great. If not you can mark where the slots go from the plastic nut that came with the kit.
Torch cleaners have done well for me slotting bass nuts. They're not really very good for guitars, but they are stiff enough for bass and leave a nice round bottom to the slot.
It's more work than proper nut files (at least from what I hear...I have only used the torch cleaners) but slow cutting has the advantage of making it harder to inadvertently go too deep.
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