Re-installing a brass nut on my LP Studio.

[DrNomis_44]

Have you glued the nut on yet, Doc? I've glued brass nuts on before with PVA and they've lasted years without any issues. But if you're having problems, I'd use a couple of spots of CA - you wound need to coat all the surfaces or it may make it very hard to remove if you need to. Likewise, I'd avoid epoxy, because you definitely won't get it off again without doing damage to the wood.

I doubt the bridge is the cause of your tuning issues, 99.9% of the time it's the nut that needs sorting and fine sanding and polishing. Even on plastic and bone nuts you can polish up the slots with a few strands of string that's been soaked in some Brasso - for that extra-low friction feel. What's the string break angle like on the bridge? To improve it you need to lower the tailpiece as low as it will go without any of the strings touching the rear edge of the bridge. You should still be able to slide a thin piece of paper between the strings and the edge of the bridge.

One thing I do with my bridges and tailpieces is wrap some PTFE plumber's tape around the threads that screw into the inserts. They are usually quite a sloppy fit, but a few turns of PTFE tape takes up the slack and they don't rattle around any more after that. Before you remove the posts, note how much thread is showing so don't wrap the tape any higher than that, so that you can't see the tape once it's screwed in.

The looseness of the threads is all part of the wide tolerances applied in mass-guitar manufacturing these days, so that if the posts holes aren't drilled at the exact distance apart, or at a slight angle, then the bridge and/or tailpiece can still be persuaded to fit on the posts. After wrapping the posts in PTFE tape you may find it harder to fit the bridge or tailpiece back on, but then they sit there and often the pressure keeps the bridge and tailpiece in place, even with no strings fitted. It's hard to say if it makes any positive difference to the sustain or tone, but it certainly doesn't degrade it and I do feel that tuning stability is improved.

I did this on my Maestro trem equipped Flying V, among a couple of other adjustments to firmly hold things in place on the trem, and now it's as stable as a well adjusted Strat trem.

So I'd fit the nut, lightly run over the slots with increasing grades of wet'n'dry - 400 upwards - and have a go at polishing the slots with a Brasso soaked string. Then get some of the PTFE tape, wrap it on your bridge (if it's not the thin threaded post type that's screwed directly into the wood) and tailpiece threads, put it all back together, adjust the string break angle and see how it goes.

I haven't glued the nut in yet, I was going to do it today but I found out that the service station didn't have any 2-part epoxy in stock, nor did they have any CA glue either, I've got plenty of PVA glue though, so I'll give it a try first before I use CA glue or epoxy, I actually was having second thoughts about using CA glue or epoxy anyway, I've got a small red container of some special nut slot lubricant, called Super Vee Superglide, which I'll try putting in the nut slots of the Brass nut, it is specially formulated to help reduce friction.


Update:

I've just gone ahead and glued the nut in with some PVA glue, I'm assuming that I'll need to give it a good amount of time to dry before I put strings on the guitar, that's fine cause I don't have any spare strings, or money to buy some, I'll buy a new set of strings some time next week.


I've just had a look at the glued-in brass nut under a magnifying glass and it looks like I've got it right this time round, it looks to me like the front-edge of the nut where the scale-length starts is sitting 90 degrees (ie, perpendicular) with respect to the surface of the fretboard, and not leaning at a funny angle, so I'm happy with that, the ends of the Brass nut feel like they're flush with the neck too, so I'm pretty relieved.