Compensated nut

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

I have never messed around with compensated nuts, but Mike McConville has some really interesting takes on it. I was thinking about trying to get him on to do a demo. I think I’ll reach out.

[Chayton Alo The Luthier Bench]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dxSv4cazEI

[Chayton Alo The Luthier Bench]

good luck!

[Vinicius Silva]

I would look into Trevor Gore’s work: His books, hundreds of posts on builders forums, etc. It is a rabbithole though, I have to warn you.

I know Taylor (maybe Martin as well?) cuts their fretboards slightly short in an effort to mitigate the sharpness of the notes being played on the first few frets when the guitar is compensated based on the open string / 12th fret method. Other companies, like musicman, sell guitars with pre-compensated nuts and adjustable saddles.

Proponents of compensating the nut and saddle claim that is a good way to make the instrument play in tune on the opne position, on all frets and with itself (give or take a few cents depending on the player’s touch). Saddle-only advocates claim that compensating the saddle is plenty on an instrument that is never going to be perfectly in tune anyway.

To me it seems people that have made a true effort in compensating both nut and saddle have at least experienced both sides of the fence, and are more in a position to have an educated opinion. Lots of “saddle only” guys seem to have never tried to compensate a nut but still favor compensation on the saddle only. A few of these guys are legend luthiers, so it is also hard to argue against their opinion.

Who is right? Hard to say. But in the end, the whole discussion shines a light on what really matters in lutherie: Arguing with stranger over the internet and always claiming victory over them.

[Dave Staudte (rhymms with "Howdy") NB Guitar Repair (New Braunfels, TX)]

Yes, the Taylor (unless Andy has changed something recently) fingerboard is 1/64″ short between the face of the nut to the first fret. Been doing that since sometime in the early 80’s.

[Paul M]

I’ve done this twice.

TBH I think it’s pretty silly. It’s really hard to get a precise idea of exactly where the string is in tune at any time, I don’t have a good strobe tuner but still, just getting a string perfectly in tune with itself I think is sort of a challenge. +-5 cents or so.

Anyway, I read the Gore book and the math is just kinda nuts. I found a spreadsheet online and it was still Greek.

Here’s what I did. I think it works and it’s simple.

So in my understanding, the saddle intonates the fretted notes to the bridge and the nut intonates the open strings to the frets.

Steps as I did it:
1) The nut is like 2-3 mm closer to the bridge than it normally would be.
2) rough the nut in to approx the right height, but leave the path horizontal (don’t round the slots back towards the headstock for the first 3mm or so because you will cut them back and you don’t want them to be low)
3) Instead of doing the open string/12th fret kinda thing to intonate the saddle, tune each string to the note on the 4th fret. Then press notes further up the neck as high as the 16th fret and get an overall feeling as to where the saddle needs to be. I find that it can be pretty inconsistent, some notes will be inexplicably high or low, but you’re trying to see the average.
4) intonate the saddle as you normally would.
5) now retune the guitar to the 4th fret notes as you did before (and check the rest of them going up and get an average of where they are. Play the open strings. They should be out of tune and tbh I can’t remember if they will be sharp or flat. But anyway, take your dremel with a little ball bit and slowly cut back the nut slot until the open string is in tune with the fretted notes.

To be totally honest it is super hard to tell if this works or not because I think the guitar is such a fucked instrument intonation wise that it’s kinda silly. It’s like if you get this perfect and then you start playing, the strings will move enough to put it out of perfect tune pretty quickly anyway. You get a good 3 minutes of perfect intonation.

Not an expert, not even sure if this is a way to do it but the guitar sounds good.

[Nicole Alosinac – Nicole Alosinac Luthiery]

It depends on what type of compensation you are planning to use. For example, with the Buzz Feiten Tuning System they use a series of offsets for the open string tuning, and the 12th fret intonation for an overall sweetening of the tuning.

However, if you are not using offsets, you can capo the first fret, set intonation at the 13th, and then tune your nut based on intonation at the first fret. Using a dremel works well.

Prior to setting intonation make sure your fretwork, set-up and nut slot height are all in order, and definitely use a strobe tuner.

Good luck!