5 Things Your Guitar Nut Must Get Right
A guitar nut might be tiny, but when it’s not right, it can throw off your tone, tuning, intonation, and playability in ways that are easy to miss.
In this video, Gene Imbody is joined by special guest Tomo Fujita to break down five key things every guitar nut needs to get right, and how to diagnose and fix them yourself at home. Learn about the tools, techniques, and details that make the difference between a decent setup and a great one.
Video Transcription
Gene Imbody: This tiny piece on your guitar does not get the attention it deserves. When your guitar nut isn't right, nothing else matters, period. There are five make or break aspects to every nut. When they're right, your guitar sings, but when they're off, you get tuning problems, muted strings, phantom noises. The guitar just doesn't play right no matter how perfect the rest of your setup is. And this is an issue you will have to deal with at some point. Most nuts from the factory are not dialed in, and even if they are, they don't stay that way forever. So today, with the help of a very special guest, I'm going to take you through these five points one by one and show you exactly what you need to know in order to dial your guitar nut in perfectly.
Tomo Fujita: Hello!
Gene Imbody: Hey, Tomo! How you doing?
Tomo Fujita: I'm doing great.
Gene Imbody: I watched the video you sent me about your noise and I think I know what's going on.
Tomo's Problem
Tomo Fujita: Hello, Gene. So here's a problem. Frets is good, intonation is great, but open strings, especially first string, second string, it's really muted. And this is really muted. This really bugs me. It's not clear. So when I play this, every time seems like this, this one. See, I want to play that straight, but it's really muted. So I hope you can figure out for me. What the problem that is causing this?
Gene Imbody: Yeah. A lot of players experience this, Tomo, and it can be pretty confusing. It's so subtle, you often wonder, am I going crazy? Or, is there something really wrong with my guitar? Is this a fret buzz? Well, I can say almost certainly the problem is in your nut.
Tomo Fujita: Oh, yep. Oh yeah, okay.
Gene Imbody: So how about this? I'm going to send you a care package with a little troubleshooting checklist of about five different things I want you to look at and some tools and some supplies you might need. I'll turn you loose on it and then we'll check back in and see how you did.
Tomo Fujita: That's great. I think a really great challenge for me to follow your suggestions and you can check me out later. That's wonderful.
Gene Imbody: We'll get it all sorted out. Thank you so much, Tomo. I'll talk to you soon.
Tomo Fujita: Thanks, Gene.
Demonstrating the Droning Sound
Gene Imbody: Fixing nut issues isn't difficult. The hard part is diagnosing them. They can be hard to hear or to know exactly where they're coming from. Let's get some better audio so you can really hear what we're talking about. First, a string played cleanly. No issues. Now the problem string. Hear that? The string doesn't ring clearly. It's muted. Fret the string and it all goes away. It's only the open note. That's your first sign the problem is in the nut. So a lot of muted sounds like drones, open string buzzes, and most tuning issues can be traced back to a nut that is not functioning properly. So let's go through the five-point checklist so you can evaluate your nut properly.
Step #1: Slot Width
Gene Imbody: The first thing to check is proper slot width. Each nut slot should closely match the gauge of the string you're using. Here I'm using 10s, probably the most common gauge string for electrics.
So that's 10, 13, 17, 26, 36 and 46 thousandths. So I made the nut on this guitar and I can tell you that the nut slots are just slightly bigger than the strings themselves, which is a good thing. But if it's too wide, the string has too much wiggle room to shift side to side. So you might hear a rattle or even end up with uneven string spacing. If the slot is too narrow, the string can't slide through smoothly when you tune and it gets hung up inside the slot. Maybe you've experienced this. You keep turning the tuner until the tension finally builds up enough to suddenly break free. And then you often hear a little ping sound. And on top of that, having a narrow nut slot prevents the string from fully seating at the bottom of the slot. When the string isn't making solid contact, it just floats in the slot.
That will kill your tone. Open notes sound dead or muted. The first and most important thing I sent Tomo is a set of nut files. These come in a variety of sizes and styles, but I just sent him a regular set of individually gauged standard nut files. That's what I use and it's what I think works best. Tomo plays 10s, so I sent him an individual file for each gauge of string. Now you may not be able to find an exact match for each gauge of string, and that's okay. If you have to go a thousandth, maybe two thousandths below, that's not ideal, but it's doable and I'll show you why in a minute. But anything up to four thousandths over is no problem at all. Another thing I sent Tomo are these backers. Now on the wider files, they're not quite as necessary, but they're very handy.
But on this thin one that's wobbly and paper thin, a backer is really important. So this just slides in here, tighten the screws down and that gives us a spine, some support to keep this file sturdy and straight. So let's swap this guitar for one that has a good example of a nut with slots that are too narrow. Check out the slots on this Gretch. My wound strings don't look too bad, but my unwound strings are pinching in the slots. Check this out. I can barely even get this E-string out of the slot. So let's run a file through there and see what happens. I'm going to drop this file down in the slot and just move it through pulling both directions until it slides easily. That didn't take much. I'm not removing any material. I'm not even creating any dust on top of the guitar.
So let's drop that string back in and that fits much nicer now. So in my instructions to Tomo, I asked him to check the width of his slots by gently sliding the nut files through and making sure there isn't any gunk or debris holding things up. Eventually we're going to talk more about the right angle and the height of the cut, but for now we're simply making sure the width is good and the slots are clean. So don't go too hard yet. The idea isn't to cut the bottom and lower the slot, this is all it takes to ensure the slots are wide enough and clean. Now if your slots are too wide, in most cases, I recommend just replacing the nut. Let me show you an example. Here's an example of slots that are way too wide. You see this a lot on plastic cheap nuts from import guitars or on guitars that are just really old and the nut has been abused and worn out over the years.
It's not worth trying to fix this. It's just a better option to replace the entire nut. Check out the B string here. You can see just how much that string moves inside of that slot and you can even hear a lot of that noise is due to the string just vibrating inside of that slot. This nut needs to go. Now making a nut from scratch can be a daunting task. There's more to it than you might expect and we have entire videos dedicated to that process if you're interested. Another good option if you're new to this are pre-made nuts. Let me show you something. These are a couple of pre-made options. The TUSQ nuts by GraphTech are a great option. They are the closest to being finished out and require the least amount of work. They're the most beginner friendly. If you're new to all of this, they're a good option for a lot of guitars.
Now, bone is my favorite material and we have some semi-machined pre-slotted bone nuts that are a great place to start if you're up for the challenge. But whatever replacement you choose, make sure you follow along this five-point checklist to make sure the important details are dialed in and the nut functions properly.
Step #2: 1st Fret Height
Gene Imbody: Now that we have our slot width worked out, we can move on to our next step, which is adjusting the height over the first fret, and that's controlled by the depth of our slot. Now this adjustment is part of a much bigger setup picture. It's a delicate balance between your nut height, your neck relief or truss rod, and your bridge saddle height. Each one of these adjustments affects the other. So if one is not right, the other two aren't either. But here's the issue I see all the time, especially on new guitars.
The neck relief is okay. The bridge, the saddles are adjusted reasonably well, but the nut is left too high. And that's understandable. Most factory nuts are just in the ballpark. They leave them for the player to dial in later, but that's not something most players understand how to do. Here's the thing. It's not like a truss rod adjustment or a bridge saddle adjustment. It's not even an adjustment. It's a modification. You're actually removing material that you can't easily put back. So you really only get one shot at it. And nut action is like the fingerprint of your setup. It's different for everybody. So where should the string height be over the first fret? Well, to get this right, your neck and your bridge and saddle adjustment has to be correct first. Otherwise, you're just chasing your tail. If you don't know how to do that, no worries.
We have a lot of videos that take you through that process step by step on our channel. Check those out before you make any alterations to your nut. In a pro setup, string height off the nut is the very last step. Here's how I determine the proper height. Grab a capo and put it behind the first fret. Now look at the clearance between the string and the second fret. That gap is your reference point. This is basically what we want to see when we remove the capo and check the gap over the first fret. If anything, we'd like to see a little extra room so we can strum open notes harder without getting a buzz. This gap is more than I'm seeing over the second fret. So I'll take a nut file that matches my string gauge and lower my slot a little bit. This is where it gets personal.
String gauge, tuning, pick attack, it all plays a major role in what your height or the first fret can be. There's a fine line between low and comfortable and low and buzzy. So file small amounts and pause often to play your guitar like you normally would. The right height is a small target and you want to sneak up on it slowly. Once you can dig in hard without buzz and the string doesn't feel too stiff when you fret it, you know you're there. And that's usually one to two times what you see over the second fret when you're capoed at the first.
Step #3: Break Angle
Gene Imbody: So that gives you an idea where your string height should land, but the path your string takes heading toward the nut is equally important and that brings us to our next step - brake angle. When a string leaves the nut and approaches the tuners, it needs to be traveling at a downward angle called the brake angle.
This delivers proper downward tension on the nut and ensures the string rings clearly. If the angle is too shallow, the strings loose and unstable in the nut and the resulting vibration creates a muted drone-like sound that can sound a lot like a sitar. On Gibson style necks, the peghead is angled back so you naturally get a good downward tension, but that's not the case on straight pig heads. That's why this problem is more common on Fender style guitars. It's not usually a problem for the strings closest to the nut because the angle is steep there. But as the tuners move farther away, the angle flattens out and the tension at the nut is reduced. That's why you see string retainers or string trees on Fender style necks. They pull the far strings down and give you a better break angle.
Something I noticed on Tomo's guitar during the Zoom call- he has a spacer underneath his string retainer, just like this guitar. It's pretty common. Sometimes the angle you get with the spacer in place still isn't enough. So you go through all your five points of your checklist and you might still get a drone. In a case like that, you need to either trim some height off the spacer or just pull it out entirely to bring the string closer to the peghead and increase the downward tension on the nut. So string brake angle is one thing, but the nut slot also needs to be cut with that same brake angle. Like I mentioned earlier, a flat nut slot is no good. It focuses the brake angle pressure at the back edge instead of spreading it evenly across the bottom of the slot. This creates the opportunity for weird noises, drones, and it can even affect your intonation.
So the slot needs to match or slightly exceed the brake angle of the string itself. To do this, use your nut files to carefully add the angle moving from the back of the nut forward. Usually this is part of step one when you lower your slots, but not always. If the string is already at the correct height, then the goal is to blend the angle into the front of the slot without lowering the string or removing material from the very front edge. So this is kind of difficult on a Fender style guitar. This is way easier on Gibsons or Martins or any sort of a guitar with a peghead angle and a much wider nut. You have a lot more room to work. The peghead isn't in your way. You have all of this clearance. It's way easier on a Fender, when you've only got an eighth of an inch of surface and I'm trying to just barely hit that back edge without touching the front edge if I don't need to lower the slot.
So take your time. Go slow, work the back edge of the nut, keep the file at an angle greater than the string so that you're just hitting the back edge and you're staying off the front. Being careful not to hit the neck, put a piece of tape back there to protect the finish. Just go slow, remove small amounts of material and check often. Filing your nut is a game of thousands. It's very easy to go just a little too far and then you end up with a string that's too low and you get a first fret buzz. So instead of replacing the nut, let me show you a cool trick for how to fill the slot and recut it. The traditional old school trick for this is to use some super glue and some baking soda or some bone dust, and pack the slot full of the dust and then bleed in some super glue and let it all solidify and then recut the slot.
I've tried all of that. It's problematic at best, I think. It's temporary and it almost always gives you binding problems. It makes the string sticky within the slot. You get your height back in exchange for some other issues. This is Nut Rescue Powder. This was created by Joe Glaser in his guitar shop in Nashville. Joe's patented this stuff. I don't even know what's in it, but it works great. It's no baking soda hack. This stuff dries harder, it lasts longer, and it's self-lubricating so it avoids all the problems that I hated. This is the only product I'll use to fill and recut a nut slot. Shout out to Joe for inventing a product that we all really need.
Okay, let me show you how this is done. First, I want to get a piece of tape in front of the nut to protect the fingerboard. We'll do our treble E string here that I just recut. I like to clean out the slot, make sure there's nothing in there. Then I'm going to take a little bit of my nut rescue powder. This comes with a tiny little spoon for dishing a little bit of this out and that works great. What I like to use is a glue looper. What this is going to allow me to do is apply this glue one drop at a time. It doesn't take much. I'm going to take the looper and I'm just going to touch it to the powder and it's going to wick right where I need it to go. Okay? I take a tip, make sure I don't have any on the top of the nut where I don't want it.
I'm going to take a little bit of accelerator, the brush-on kind, because I don't want to just spray it everywhere and that glue will dry instantly. That's it. It's dry already. The last thing I'm going to do is take an extra fine nut shaping file and just trim off the top flush with the rest of the nut. And just like that, I get a second chance at cut a new nut slot.
Step #4: Slot Depth
Gene Imbody: The fourth thing we need to consider is the depth of the string inside the nut. If we had to lower our string and cut the slot deeper, we may have buried the string underneath the surface of the nut. What I'm shooting for is about half the diameter of the wound strings sticking out above the top of the nut and to just feel the tops of the unwound strings. I want those buried a little bit further so they stay in place during aggressive bends.
If you're already at this stage after all of this work, you can just skip this step. Let's look at an example where the strings are buried way too far in the nut. I have the perfect Strat for that one too. Look how deep these strings are buried inside of this nut and all of this excess material we don't need above the top of the string. The reason we don't want this is because it's not doing us any good. It's not helping the strings stay in place and that much excess material can cause binding issues, which will give us tuning problems and the string can actually hang up in the slot and not ring clearly. Not to mention is it just doesn't look very good. Now one thing to keep in mind, if you have a really cheap plastic nut, a really inexpensive import guitar, don't even bother with this.
It's not worth it. Just replace the nut. It doesn't have to be bone, but if it's the softest, cheapest plastic, it's just not worth your time and it's not going to shape out right or look very good- just replace that nut. This one we can reshape. So let's remove all this material we don't need. It's important to tape off for this. We're going to use a nut and saddle shaping file to remove exces material above the strings and you don't want to risk hitting the finish or the fretboard. I file until I start to hit the top of the strings. You're going to have to sacrifice a set of strings for this part, so don't change your strings first. Once I can see I've begun to hit the top of the strings, I loosen them a bit and pull them aside. Then I keep going on the wound string slots a little more since I want more of those strings exposed, and then I blend that into the trouble side of the nut.
Check again with the strings and adjust until you're close. Be careful to leave a little more material than you actually need for the final sanding and polishing steps later so you don't go past your mark. Switch to a finer cut on this file and blend all this into the rough shape so I don't have any sharp edges or corners and my deepest scratches start to come out. We'll polish this out and finish shaping it during our last step of the nut setup, dressing the slot.
Step #5: Dressing
Gene Imbody: Okay, even though this is the last step, it is critical for the proper functioning of your nut. Even if you've got every other step perfect up to this point, if you skip this stage or get it wrong, you could still be getting a weird noise coming from your nut and you're definitely setting yourself up for tuning issues. So what do I mean by dress?
Two things. First, your slot needs to funnel out in the back of the nut. This guides your string into place and directs it where it needs to go. Think of the string like a car heading down the highway. When you come to an exit, it doesn't just break right hard. There's an on - ramp to guide you into place gently. We need to do the same thing with our nut slots. And second, we need to smooth any sharp corners that are left over. The objective is to end up with a properly sized slot that works with the angle of the string, allowing it to lead cleanly from the front edge without binding. This also allows the string to ring clearly, intonate properly, and helps to deliver smooth, effortless tuning. We're going to stick with this same guitar and finish out this nut and I'm going to show you how I like to dress the slots.
Let's start with the bass E string here. I'm going to use a 46 thousandths nut file, matches the gauge of my string, and we're going to start on the back edge. These corners, since we filed our slots and we've cleaned off the top, are very sharp. And this is also the reason why I wanted to remove all of this excess material. I want to come in and hit these sharp edges on the back of my slot. If I had all that excess material sitting clear above here, I could dress that all day and it doesn't matter because the string is buried clear to the bottom. So you don't want all that excess material. It gets in the way, and it prevents you from dressing the slot out properly. On a Fender, I don't have a lot of room to work. I'm just going to tilt the file and concentrate short strokes on the back corners just to round those off a little bit.
I'm coming in at an angle almost like the back of my funnel, and I'm going to roll that all the way through the slot clear to the other side. It's also helpful to come at a very steep angle and just get bottom of the slot to get that nice round over ramp leading into the slot. And you'll repeat that for all of these strings, and it gets more difficult as you get down to the unwound strings because there's not a lot there, but you still just want to come in and make sure there's no sharp corners. Then the last thing I want to do is come through and really smooth all of that out. And to do that, I've sent Tomo some Tolecut Sandpapers from Eagle Abrasives. They come in high grits starting at 800, but they cut like lower grits. They just leave a really fine finish and they're great for doing stuff like this.
I can fold this over and it sticks on itself and I can come back and polish out that slot really nice. And I'll even hit the front edge a little bit. I don't want to widen it out like I did in the back, but I want to make sure that I don't have any sharp corners that are going to impede the movement of the string. You can go up in a couple of grits and then work my way through. When I get to the unwound strings, it gets a little more difficult to fold it and fit in there. So you kind of have to work side to side flipping the paper around. And I'm also going to clean up the top that I reshaped with my file. Make sure there's no file marks in there and everything blends real smoothly, and looks clean. Just move through a few higher grits to make sure it's polished out and shiny.
This is also a good time to mention that in the beginning of the video when we were choosing our file sizes, I mentioned that if the closest you can get to your string is a thousandth, maybe two thousandths under, that will work even though it's not ideal. First of all, because you're cutting a slot by hand. So it's going to be a little bigger than the gauge listed on the file just because of the inaccuracy of hand cutting a slot. Furthermore, you're coming in with these sandpapers at the end to smooth everything out. You're going to lose a thousandth or two on the width and that's going to allow the string to really seat and slide through smoothly. Final thing I do to it is just polish it out. You can take some polishing cloth, a little bit of soft leather or shammy just by hand and the friction alone will polish it up, but you can get a little fancier if you want and use a little fine buffing compound to get a good shine.
And this will look beautiful. So while you're doing this, you're going to get some gunk in the slot. Make sure that's cleaned out. You can use your nut files or brush. It's not a big deal. Just pick it out of there. Let's see what it looks like.
If you get to the stage and you're tuning up and you hear a ping, you did something wrong. We'll leave the last string off here so you can see the back that I funneled out and softened and cleaned up. And you can see I've got tops of my strings exposed. This looks great. Way better than what we started with. These strings are going to move through here easily and not cause any tuning issues and they're going to ring clearly and the height above the first fret is going to be perfect. And our last string. Beautiful. Okay, that does it. Those are our five points. Let's check in with Tomo and see how he did.
Tomo's Results
Gene Imbody: Hello!
Tomo Fujita: Hi.
Gene Imbody: How are you, my friend?
Tomo Fujita: I'm doing great.
Gene Imbody: Good. So how did it go for you?
Tomo Fujita: Yeah, it's really good. I mean, much, much clearer. Everything I play. (Tomo plays for a moment.)
Gene Imbody: That sounds a lot better.
Tomo Fujita: Yes, much better. Yes.
Gene Imbody: So what did you have to do to it? Did you go through each one of the five steps I sent you?
Tomo Fujita: Yeah. So the first I used a file that matched with my high E-string and then I made it a little smooth. And after that I used the sandpaper and just I made it a little bit more wider and smoother. And after that, it's not muted anymore. That was amazing. Yeah.
Gene Imbody: Well, I think it's just because you're such a dynamic player in the way you play and you press a lot behind the nose.
Tomo Fujita: Yeah. I bend a lot like that. I use that. And then I think it's been like four or five years after the new net was built. So I think kind of wore out while I'm playing.
Gene Imbody: I think that might happen again too.
Tomo Fujita: Yes, exactly. And then funny part is I really surprised that I can really do this by myself because I was a little afraid there was something wrong. But your guidance was really clear that I only do a few times with two.
Gene Imbody: Well, we did the same thing here and I kind of recreated your noise and we went through it in detail how I fixed it.
Tomo Fujita: Those guidelines really important for us a guitar player because sometimes in guitar player, we play by feeding, but also danger of fixing something. We use a feeding to fix it and go beyond. So that was a guideline really helped me.
Gene Imbody: Tomo, I'm so happy it worked out for you. Now you have little tools and this has been great. Thank you so much for, uh -
Tomo Fujita: Yeah, it has been great. Thanks so much, Gene, for helping me through this. Maybe I hope I have more problems so I can use these tools.
Gene Imbody: I bet you will.
Tomo Fujita: Yeah, right.
Gene Imbody: And you're getting ready to go back to Japan soon, right, you said?
Tomo Fujita: Yeah, next time.
Gene Imbody: Yes. And you have a new book out.
Tomo Fujita: Right. Guitar Wisdom, right? It's in all English!
Gene Imbody: Tell us about it!
Tomo Fujita: Yeah, this is a little bit more philosophy, one finger, one string approach. Then I introduce triads, chorus, rhythm, tapping. It's really different from regular guitar method book.
Gene Imbody: I can't wait to check it out. Until next time, huh?
Tomo Fujita: Yeah.
Gene Imbody: We'll do this again.
Tomo Fujita:Yeah, I will call you again.
Gene Imbody: Thank you so much, Tomo.
Tomo Fujita: Thank you, Gene. All right. See you soon.
Gene Imbody: There we have it. That was a success. Tomo had a small fix that made a huge change in the way his nut worked. So now you have the five steps that you need to know in order to make sure that the nut on your guitar always functions properly. Tomo didn't even need all five. He needed the first one and the last one, but it's good to know them all because you never know when they're going to come in handy. So thanks for joining us, and we'll see you at the bench next time.
