Oh - ouch. Somehow I missed your previous post, which is a shame, because there's a way to get stubborn nuts out without damaging the timber. Never mind: water under the bridge.

Onward and upward!

Cheers - C

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Sorry about that - but then the glue's got some time to dry Dare I say congrats yet ?

Btw - I am starting (just starting ) to feel old , and feel the time rush faster for each year, but for what I remember the Classic Player series is not THAT old ??? I'm not a totally Fender -geek who keep track about all models - but I could swear the CP was introduced about 10 years later than this one....
So my guess is that this is a 60'sClassic Series Anyway - nice guitar, hope it will be yours !

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A-man

I think your correct. I found one on EBAY that was identical. Its a 60's classic. After I finsh fixing it up I will take it to the owner and find out what the full meaning of his twice
statement to me "do what you want with it, I will never play it."

NOW....My graphtech nut arrived. Its a little fat to fit into the slot. I think I need to remove the tab on the bottom as the slot is arched like the fretboard. I don't wanna screw this up....Help!

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I remember when we were free!

OK. Now, pay attention, because you'll be tested on this later.

1. If the bottom of your nut slot is curved then you just remove that little tab from the bottom edge of the TUSQ nut. Use a hacksaw blade, or you can even carve it off using a scalpel or X-Acto. Clean it up to a nice smooth surface with fine sandpaper.

2. GraphTech and others usually make nuts a touch too big, so's you can resize them downwards if necessary. That's better than the alternative - it would be no use to you if the nut was already too small.

Golden rule: adjust the nut to fit the slot, not the other way around. For making it thinner, just rub it carefully on a sheet of sandpaper on a flat surface. Like this:



That's P320 paper, which seems about right. A bit finer or rougher won't matter.

Important: put your finger in the middle of the nut and keep it as level as you can as you move it end to end, as indicated by my red arrows. However, no matter how careful you are, if you have to take at all much material off you are going to find you've sanded a bit more at either end than in the middle: that's just how it always works with sanding. So then you need to gently remove material in the middle, till the surface is absolutely flat when tested against your steel rule. Like this:



That's a piece of P180 which just happened to be what I had handy for the photo. Probably a bit finer is better: P280 or 320. P500 will bring things to a nice polish.

3. The nut should sit in the slot snugly but without having to press to get it in. Once you're ready to seat it you can use a tiny drop of white woodwork glue in the middle to make it absolutely firm if you want. Some people think this helps the string to vibrate more cleanly and with more sustain. Personally, I don't usually glue my nut in: I like to size it so that it stays in place by itself and can be lifted out with just the gentlest pull. Either way is good, but if you use glue then just a drop, so you can easily get the nut out again next time.

4. If you are lucky your GraphTech nut might happen to exactly fit your neck without further adjustment. That has happened for me a couple of times. However, more likely is that your string slots need to be lowered slightly.

If the radius of the nut is the same as that of the neck (7.25, 9.5 or whatever) then there is a cheat's method you can use. You can simply sand the bottom edge of the nut in the same way as earlier, till all the strings are the right height above the first fret. If doing it this way, sand only a tiny bit at a time and install the nut and tune to pitch repeatedly to check your progress. If you go too far the nut will be spoiled and you have to start again with another, so tiny steps is the way to go. (All of this is a good reason not to have glued the nut in, at least yet.)

5. However. Much better would be to learn to adjust string slots the "proper" way, using automotive feeler gauges. Feeler gauges can be had for next-to-no-money ($5-10 or so) from a car parts shop, or online. Ebay is smothered in affordable feeler gauges. A great tip is to buy a set that is calibrated in both imperial and metric, like mine. For those as don't know what feeler gauges are, this is what they look like:



All of those blades are different calibrated thicknesses and they can be stacked one above another to give a total desired thickness, very accurately:



6. Next, you need to measure how high your frets are. There are different ways to do this but easiest and most accurate is to lay your steel rule over the frets edge on and measure the gap between it and the fingerboard, between the first and second frets. Like this:



Some people do that using a capo'd string as a straight edge, and that will work. But the steel rule makes it much easier and more reliable.

As an example (your frets will be different), I found that using the 0.9mm / 0.035" blade and the 0.13mm / 0.005" one stacked together gave me exactly the height of my frets - 1.03mm / 0.040". Your mileage will definitely vary. Here are my two blades:



7. A good luthier spec is that the string slots should be cut so that the strings are 0.5mm / 0.020" above the first fret. So now we add the 0.5mm / 0.020" feeler blade into our stack, giving a total of 1.53mm / 0.060" (in this case: YMMV). In other words, the height of the frets + 0.5mm / 0.020". That is how high the bottom of the strings slots should be above the fingerboard. Here are the three blades I shall be using:



As earlier, they are bendy and can be pinched together to give a stack of the right thickness at the tip:



When filing nut slots it is important to remember to angle the file towards the headstock a little to produce a slot that tilts away from the fingerboard. This is so that the front edge of the nut (the edge facing the frets) gives a nice clean "breaking point", and you don't get string buzz from the nut:



So now all we need to do is insert the stack of feeler blades beneath the slot we are adjusting and very carefully file away till the bottom edge of our nut file just touches the feeler gauge stack - and then stop. Now we have a nut slot the right height above the fingerboard and frets.



Do this for each string using the appropriate sized nut file and - presto! - we're done.

8. Obviously, the right tools for this task are proper nut files. I like the individual sized ones from Stew-Mac, or you can use their other, double-edged model that has a different sized file on each side; or other manufacturers' files are available:



However, nut files do cost money and if you only ever plan to do this once you may resent spending $60-80 for a set. So there is another (highly depricated) cheat's method. You can take a piece of fine wet-and-dry paper, P1000 would be good, fold it over and use the resulting edge as a makeshift file:



By pinching the fold into a sharp edge you can just about get it fine enough to do the top couple of string slots, like this:



To turn it into a thicker file you can insert a piece of guitar string into the fold:



(I only had a thick, wound string handy for that photo, but in reality you'd probably use a top, unwound string so as not to make your "file" too thick.)

9. So how do you know if you adjusted your nut slots to the right depth? Here is a rough-and-ready way of testing nut set-up.

Fret the string at the first fret and examine the gap between the underside of the string and the top of the third fret. Like this:



Next, fret the string at the third fret and examine the gap between the underside of the string and the top of first fret:



If those two gaps are pretty much the same then the nut slot is cut more or less right. If the second gap (above the first fret) is larger than the other one then the nut slot is not cut deep enough and you need to take it down a bit further. If the second gap (above the first fret) is smaller or if there is no gap at all above the first fret then your nut slot is too deep and you have to throw the nut away and start again.

So take care filing.

Ultimately, this is what we are aiming for. The difference at the first fret between the open string -



- and the fretted string -



- should look something close to what you see in those photos. You can measure it with your feeler gauge: it should be near as dammit 0.5mm / 0.020 thousandths of an inch. (Metric is so-o-o-o much easier!)

So there ya go. I spent time on those photos, so reward the effort by doing a good job!

Good luck - C

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great post and pics Ceri!

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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancin'

Thanks - I got a bit carried away, but it is so much easier to follow this stuff with nice clear pictures than just scratching our heads over a huge block of text!

Cheers - C

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No, not at all, you don't know how helpful this will be. I hope to have this finished this weekend and be back to playing this Strat ASAP.

Sincerely,
OL

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I remember when we were free!

Update:

I just added this guitar to my household for $400. I finally fished out who the true owner was, and the instruments status. It all worked out.

I still have some work to do on the nut. I replaced it but its not quite "right" yet. but any way its a neat guitar and my first 71/4 radius which takes getting used to.

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I remember when we were free!

Ba-dum-tish!

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Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus