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Post subject: Re: Why no adult-sized nut widths?
Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:01 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Most Gibsons just use the adult-standard 43mm nut width, same as American Fender. Nothing special. Gibsons, especially vintage ones, do tend to have "fat" necks, thick wood on the neck requiring a bigger hand.

Big hands is kind of a misnomer. The factors involved in needing wider necks have more to do with the size of your finger pads, and the length of your fingers. You could have large hands, but with small finger pads (finger tips), enabling very clean execution on 42 and 41mm nut widths. Some of the Affinities get down to near 40mm nut width.

I have long, skinny boney fingers with large pads. Ideal for me is 1 3/4" or larger. But I can get by okay on most 1 11/16ths" standard necks. But like was mentioned above, the nut cuts are a factor, too.

Another factor is playing a finger-picking non-plectrum right hand style a la Jeff Beck which is what I do. Your right hand needs a good spread on the strings to pick cleanly, perhaps why acoustic guitars routinely have nut widths approaching 2". Jeff mentioned that to me once, "You use your right hand like I do! No picks! It so much freer, ain't it?" I just told him it wasn't really by choice, I just got so wild and excited on stage and sweat so much that the picks always slipped out of my hand, and I had to play with my fingers. He was kind of disappointed to hear that.

You know, I always like to ask folks just after they've played a good acoustic how they liked it. They say, great, fine, excellent or whatever. Could you play clean and comfortably, etc? Oh yeah, it's great! Felt really good!

Then I tell them they've just discovered how great 2" nut widths are. And they'd probably really like a wider neck on their electric.


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Post subject: Re: Why no adult-sized nut widths?
Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 8:59 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Tue Mar 03, 2009 2:14 pm
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The American Standard may have a 43mm nut but plenty of American made Fender Strats also have the 42mm nut. It may be that 42 is closer to the original specs. If you check the products page on the website you will see that all the reissues like the 57' Strat, 62' Strat etc. have a 42mm nut. So do some of the artist series guitars. Just a thought but I would say they incresed the width for the American Special, HWY1 and Am Standard for reasons you have described but that accurate reissues use the more correct 42mm for originality.


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Post subject: Re: Why no adult-sized nut widths?
Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 11:31 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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True but the actual volume of the custom vintage Americans with the narrow necks is tiny compared to the sales volume of the mainstream 43mm nut American guitars which carry the vast majority of the market. Fender is telling us that if you want a modern, standard electric adult-sized guitar made in America they have determined that the 43mm nut width is what folks want, and what they should provide.

Some uninformed guy over on FDP posted that many Squiers have 43mm necks as well as 42mm. Of course, that's nonsense. No Squiers have 43mm.

Going back in time, if you search around, there were some old Musicmasters/Duosonics/Mustangs from around the early-to-mid 60's that used the 43mm nut width. But my '65 MM2 is the more common narrow width. Drat the luck.


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Post subject: Re: Why no adult-sized nut widths?
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2011 11:04 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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Location: High on a Mountain Top
Musicmaster2 wrote:
True but the actual volume of the custom vintage Americans with the narrow necks is tiny compared to the sales volume of the mainstream 43mm nut American guitars which carry the vast majority of the market. Fender is telling us that if you want a modern, standard electric adult-sized guitar made in America they have determined that the 43mm nut width is what folks want, and what they should provide.

Some uninformed guy over on FDP posted that many Squiers have 43mm necks as well as 42mm. Of course, that's nonsense. No Squiers have 43mm.

Going back in time, if you search around, there were some old Musicmasters/Duosonics/Mustangs from around the early-to-mid 60's that used the 43mm nut width. But my '65 MM2 is the more common narrow width. Drat the luck.


I was checking out the new Joe Trohman Tele and it has a 1.6875" nut width and 12" radius compared to the normal 1.625 nut width and 9.5" radius so maybe you are in luck


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Post subject: Re: Why no adult-sized nut widths?
Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2011 10:40 pm
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Rock Star
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Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 2:37 pm
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Location: Natural Bridge, Virginia
Scratching my head over the point of this thread. What is the point except to complain? The neck on my Squier Affinity Tele plays just as easily as the neck on my AVRI 52 Telecaster. You get used to it after enough practice. :wink:

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Post subject: Re: Why no adult-sized nut widths?
Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 6:39 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Sat Jan 01, 2011 12:15 pm
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When I was young I used to bite my fingernails. This resulted in me having larger finger pads. It's hard to cord my Affinity. Other than that, I love that guitar as much as my Fenders and can see why many who just simply want to play guitar would never bother upgrading to a Fender.


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