source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 06:10:05 -0700 Subject: RE: How I Refretted My Guitar On My Summ From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> I've had two guitars that needed a nut adjustment. One was my first, kit-form, and thus rather crude, guitar (a 10TET beastie), and the other was my Ramirez. The Ramirez (it's a cheapie for a Ramirez) was designed to be played very loudly, so the nut and bridge are MUCH taller than the frets. So, in addition to the graduatedly increasing amount of tension as you work your way to higher positions, all but the open string endure an additional amount of tension from the height of the nut. If you want to continue to really WANG the strings like they expected, then the best solution is to get an experienced repair shop to remove the nut, file the fingerboard a millimeter or two, and reset the nut. Most guitars use a weak glue for setting the nut (and a few use none at all), so it's not usually hard to adjust them. The biggest difficulty is that, in the process of filing into the fingerboard, you'll accidentally file down into the neck. That's easy to do because the wood for the neck is often softer than for the fingerboard. I suspect, although I haven't heard of this being done, that you can do the same (very carefully!) with a guitar maker's band saw. But on my Ramirez, I took the other approach: I just filed down the height of the nut so that it was not much taller than the frets, so it didn't require any correction, and was easier to play. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 15:12 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id GAA19656; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 06:12:46 -0700 Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 06:12:46 -0700 Message-Id: <960605130440_71670.2576_HHB13-11@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu