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Nut location. I have question, A lot of guitars have the nut on the plane on the overlay and I was wondering is it possible to put it on the same plane as the board so its a flat bottom nut and then it would just move the location of the bridge a bit I am assuming?

banjoguync wrote:Nut location. I have question, A lot of guitars have the nut on the plane on the overlay and I was wondering is it possible to put it on the same plane as the board so its a flat bottom nut and then it would just move the location of the bridge a bit I am assuming?

Since the fretboard has height and abuts the nut, the nut sits lower. I've seen guitars that have nuts that sit on plane with the neck, with no carved slot. The nut slot is made for the nut so that it engages the neck fully and absolutely, so that the string vibrations are sent properly to the bridge. I know from experience, that if the nut bottom is not sitting 100% in the neck, that you can get some strange and very unwanted noise.

If you're talking about putting the nut on top of the fretboard, I've had no experience with this and I'm not sure how it would sound. Traditionally steel string acoustic guitars have radiused fretboards (unlike classicals which have flat, wide boards); the top of the nut has to emulate the radius. If you were to sit the nut on top of the fretboard, the bottom of the nut would have to have the negative of this radius which would be very difficult to do properly. It's much easier to sit the flat bottomed nut on/in the flat bottomed neck, with the curved fretboard in front.

It's always preferable not to glue the nut or saddle in place; the only way to keep it in place is to make a nut slot, with the fretboard abutting it.

The bridge placement, regardless, is always determined by the distance from the fretboard side of the nut (zero fret), to the saddle of the bridge.

If you move the nut the 6 mm or so your talking about there are a couple of other factor. The 12 or 14th fret will no longer line up with the body. you would need to make sure the bridge is still on the x-brace and you also need to check the placement of the bridge patch.

If the neck is designed to have the nut on the head stock I would leave it there.

Ok, that makes perfect sense

johnnparchem wrote: If the neck is designed to have the nut on the head stock I would leave it there.

What John said. You can do it either way but the neck must be designed and made appropriately.

I did mine like this. The end of the headstock overlay is beveled so it's vertical and the nut sits between it and the fingerboard.

MaineGeezer wrote:I did mine like this. The end of the headstock overlay is beveled so it's vertical and the nut sits between it and the fingerboard.

Same here.