Well my stuff showed up and I fooled around with it for a minute. I'll get some work done then post better pics but ya have to start someplace.
Well my stuff showed up and I fooled around with it for a minute. I'll get some work done then post better pics but ya have to start someplace.
Every journey begins with the first step guitar...
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
I built the exact same one a few years back if you're interested:
https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ead.php?t=8146
There are a few quirks with Pitbull's left handed models that you need to be aware of, which are covered in there.
I've just realized I never showed pictures of the final result in that thread. I have them in another one somewhere; I'll have to dig them out.
It's in here:
https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...l=1#post204161
The yellow/green "sunburst" look came out OK, but the yellow centre made it painfully obvious that the body was made from three pieces of wood glued together. So I cut some random scratches through the wax finish along the grain with some extremely coarse sandpaper, and dabbed on some more cyan inkjet dye, which produced fake but realistic-looking green woodgrain.
Last edited by Keith Walters; 04-05-2022 at 08:23 AM.
Nice, good to see another lefty here. Check that the nut is actually cut left-handed, it took me ages to realise when I did my JM-1L that the nut was backwards.
And if it is not a proper lefty nut TUSQ make a very good nut that you can use to replace it.Originally Posted by jarro_2783
Is it actually cut left handed, or do they just put it on the other way round?
On both my LH Pitbull kits it was correct, can't say I took much notice.
All hand-waving aside, what is the actual benefit of using a more expensive nut?
That was something I was going to have a look at down the track, but I can't seem to find any information as to what the actual benefit is.
The one that came with mine was actually a right-handed nut put on backwards, so the slots looked right, but it touched at the head side of the nut and the string length was all wrong.
I managed to get a properly cut TUSQ nut from my local guitar shop.
The nut should be a hard material so that it absorbs the minimum of vibration from the string. It should have a characteristic that’s similar to the fret material so that open strings sound the same as fretted notes. It should be hard wearing so the string pressure and movement only slowly cuts into the base of the slot, so you don’t get buzzing on the first frets fairly quickly after it’s been cut. You also want it to have low friction, for better tuning stability.
Unfortunately the standard plastic nut is far too soft a plastic to fulfil those roles. The sonic features are far less apparent on an electric than an acoustic guitar, but there is still a small contribution. But the mechanical benefits remain. Bone is a great natural nut material, and even the cheap bone nuts from Amazon or eBay are far better than the standard nuts you get on the kits and a lot of manufactured guitars. Plastic nuts from the likes of GraphTech are designed to be as hard as bone and low friction.
There is a good reason to swap out any soft plastic nut, but they still need to be cut properly with the slots angled down towards the headstock slightly so the fulcrum point fir the string is right on the fretboard edge of the nut.
Jarro - I had a similar issue with the JM1-L nut - a right hand nut put in back to front. I did the same as you and put in a TUSQ nut and it fitted perfectly.
Simon - thanks for the explanation on the nut materials. I found that when I tapped the kit nut on a hard surface it gave a dull thud. The TUSQ nut gave a clearer sound when tapped. A big improvement in the tone it generated. The other issue with the kit nuts is that if they are right handed nuts put in back to front they will not be correctly angled, affecting tuning and intonation.
Well Ive been busy so have not jumped in on the build yet although I have located some drill bits that I think will work. It appears that the nut is cut the proper way for a lefty but I will replace that with a Tusq for sure. I had to tell myself, "just build it and make a useable guitar so I can trying learning lefty". (and not tear out the frets and redoo it in stainless jumbos hahah). One of the first things will be to walk up to the drum end of a belt sander and fix the body contours. Here are a few pics of my old strat (i think about a 73). I have had since the late 80s, It has a old charvel neck, (before they were serial numbered or called boogie parts). It developed quite a twist over the years and I spent several years untwisting it then refretted it and reshaped the body like the 50s belly/forearm cut.
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