Recently, I ordered a couple of Zero Glide nuts to replace the Tusq XL nuts on my LP Studio and Angus SG, I picked them up from the post office this afternoon and I finally have them here at home with me so I can start working on installing them, here's a pic so you can see what they look like:
These Zero Glide nuts are not your ordinary nuts, they are specially designed for adding what's called a Zero-Fret to a guitar fingerboard, okay so what's so special about that?, from what I've read a Zero Fret offers some advantages over a traditional nut, firstly, with a Zero Fret you no longer have to go through the process of filing nut slots in a nut to the correct depth and shape to get a buzz-free 1st fret action since the Zero Fret automatically sets the 1st fret action correctly for all strings, have you ever tried putting a capo on your guitar just behind the first fret and wondered why the action is suddenly much better for fretting notes?, that's because the first fret is now acting like a nut, the Zero Fret does the same thing.
The other advantage I see is that because the nut slots only keep the strings spaced evenly behind the Zero Fret, you don't get any of that annoying Sitar-Buzzing that traditional nuts can suffer from, the Zero Fret does two jobs at once, it accurately defines the zero-point on the scale length, plus it also sets the 1st fret action, because the string rests on the Zero Fret the energy from the vibrating string gets transferred into the wood better, so open strings should sound virtually identical to fretted notes, once the Zero Glide Nut has been installed on my Angus SG I'll do a new recording for you so stay tuned.
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