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Any theories on the mechanism behind it? Differential longitudinal contraction of the neck and fingerboard woods? Longitudinal contraction of both woods causing the slots to pinch harder on the fret tangs? Transverse contraction against the fret barbs causing the slots to wedge open wider?

The electric crowd and I'm one of them... are the worse. Neither Dave or I can go on the electric forums because when we share with people the physics behind what they may or may not believe we invariably piss off some forum sacred cow and we get booted. Or we get accused of being commercial even when we don't say our business at all but state a knowledge level superior to the sacred forum cows.... Pretty sad, everyone including us loses because people take what they believe about guitars as gospel.

Yeah it's F-ed up

I don't know the exact mechanism but it's pretty clear that the neck and the fret board are expanding and contracting at differing rates kind of like a bimetallic strip in a thermostat that curls as a reaction. The strings come down and even at times contact the frets and the instrument is unplayable.

The invention of the double action rod saves these instruments making it a very good thing.

We see a lot of wealthy students at the University who leave the D-28 Authentic that Daddy sent them to college with against the heat register and they they go into back bow, the guitar not the student.

Thanks. I'm not one to simply accept such a problem without knowing for sure that it can't be prevented from happening in the first place
Perhaps I'll try gluing together some thin strips of common neck and fingerboard woods and see if certain combos bend one way or the other in the winter.

A correctly done nut intonation will improve intonation on all guitars. It makes it possible to correct the intonation as good as it can be on two spots on the fretboard, not just one as with the standard 12th fret intonation with the saddle, I choose the 3d and 12th fret. Among the 40 or so nut intonations I've done so far and counting, there were a handful of modern western guitars and a couple of electric guitars, the rest is done on small parlor guitars.

Every guitar is an individual and has to be measured, no one intonation pattern at the nut & saddle will be optimal. So, the Earvana and the likes will never give you optimal intonation, in fact, they may even make it worse, but probably a bit better than without it (there is a lot to gain even when doing the nut intonation wrong!).

Some guitar intonates pretty well as is, others need 3 mm difference in the position of the intonation points in the nut for different strings. The best one I've measured, an electric guitar, only had to be corrected half a mm on three of the strings at the nut.

A correctly measured nut intonation will make chords played near the nut, the most commonly used frets, sound much better. Even small intonation differences between open and fretted notes in a chord near the nut will be very audible. Playing single strings, the player is able to pitch up some notes, but that is not possible in a chord.

The nut intonation will be optimal for the setup, strings and tuning used when doing the measuring. Different thickness of the strings don't degrade the intonation much, but a different tuning will for sure. The string height at the 1st and 12th fret is also very important for the intonation, you need to keep the string heights at the heights used when doing the measuring. A new set of strings will change the 12th fret intonation a bit since the wound strings can't be trusted, but not affect the 3d fret nut intonation as much. On an electric guitar, doing a standard 12th fret intonation with the new set of strings and with the same strings, string heights and tuning, the nut intonation will be almost as good as when measured.

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It is hard but brittle too. I was introduced to it when I was in Costa Rica with my wife and she was looking at necklaces one of which was made from Tagua. My first thought was, hmmm I wonder if I can make nuts from this She bought it, it was beautiful piece. Some few years later she dropped it and it cracked right in half very easily. CA glue put it together perfectly but it does seem a bit brittle and I would be concerned that it would crack at the string slots.

Worth a try on a personal instrument though.

Thanks. I’ll get bone nut and saddle blanks, and save the tagua for inlay work.

Intonation on the nut , I havent tried it because I "assumed" it would throw the fret locations off ? or is it so minor that it doesnt affect it ? Or am I understanding this wrong ?

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Intonation at the nut will leave all the frets in its place. Instead, the intonation point for each string at the nut will be moved forward some small distance (not the same) closer to the 1st fret. The fretboard can be cut shorter at the top, or you can have a shelf nut to reach the correct intonation points. The saddle also has to be intonated to match the new intonation points at the nut.

If you are interested, you can read the article I had in American Luthier #144, you can find a copy of it on my web-site.

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New will change the old,
turn to ashes or gold

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I’m kinda with Hesh on nut compensation, at least for conventional guitars. Nail the setup and generally things are well inside 3 cents in the low positions. Some can hear a discrepancy of a cent but not many and even among those with golden ears there is often the recognition that a guitar is not a piano and is not held to the same standard. Geometry can and will move a minuscule amount in service one day to the next if the guitar is not kept in a totally controlled environment so chasing that last cent or two can be an exercise in chasing one’s tail.

Of course the above presumes the guitar is accurately built and I agree older instruments (presumably like many of the parlours Roger restores) where fretboards were slotted by hand and eye and the rule of 18 may display poor intonation in general and benefit from remediation. Then there’s the edge-cases like the brand new $25,000 guitar that came through my shop with reported intonation issues where a quick examination showed fret 4 to be mis-located by 1.5mm (!!!!).

Short string length will increase the amount of corrections needed at the nut. Big steel guitars with longer string length will intonate better for sure. Generally, the big guitars and/or electric guitars need less compensation. But as always, there are exceptions to the rule. One really nice, expensive and responsive full size guitar needed a lot of compensation of the nut.

I can say that the result of my nut compensations probably are more correct than the ear can detect, at least as single string notes. In a chord, maybe even a 3 cent correction can be noticed. If only as a "cleaner" sound.

As for the old parlor guitars, some actually have the frets in the right positions. Early Levin parlors from before 1910 are usually spot on. But I have also seen German made parlor with the frets in ruffly the right positions until the 12th fret. After that, the frets were seemingly put on by eyesight, the worst one 3 mm off!

I almost always replace the fretboard and put the frets in the correct position on my restoration. If I keep the original fretboard, the fret slots are filled in and new ones are sawn. The frets obviously has to be in the right position to intonate correctly.

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turn to ashes or gold

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Yep, I much preferred building for the wall at the store. Mostly if someone asked for a commission I’d tell them I’d build it for the store and they had right of first refusal. Had to be a relatively standard model, no weird stuff.

I think buying that way gives a customer a much better chance of getting a keeper. Like you said, easier to be objective. Even from an experienced builder with similar woods each guitar will have a unique personality to some degree.

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Making a left-handed guitar is as simple as flipping the template over.
I tried it. It was not simple.

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Wah

We disagree as usual with nearly everything you said and again Roger I don't want this thread to go south for the folks enjoying it OR me.

So again if you want to argue your position on nut compensation start your own thread. For now just about every condition that you cited above on a modern steel string guitar can be addressed by cutting the nut slots low and correctly. The intonation errors especially closer to the nut go below the threshold of a human's ability to perceive the differences.

Thanks

Exactly! You remember back in the day here Terry when I was producing a guitar a month and posting pics well lurkers wanting to commission something would contact me frequently. However may of them wanted some weird arse thing maybe with 7 strings, etc and I had the distinct feeling that they were approaching a new builder thinking I did not know enough yet to stay the hell away from them... So I lucked out never getting bogged down in one of those slogs.

I know three OLFers who did a commission on their first ever sold guitar and in all cases the relationship went south. Either funds dried up by the time the instrument was done or one builder had a life change and couldn't build anymore, etc. It would give me a heart attack if I had commitments to deliver guitars in the future and take all the fun out of it.

Good one Dan and we are approached to convert even Martins at times to left handed. Folks think it's a nut only and are surprised to learn it's a nut, it's a plugged and milled saddle slot, new saddle and maybe more depending on the guitar. They are also surprised to learn that bracing patterns are asymmetrical.

Even more folks are surprised to learn that a neck should have a right and a lot side with different relief....... Very few makers address this.

The hard part was convoluting my hand to play a chord.

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Wah

I’ve sold perhaps half of my instruments as commissions; in fact, I’ve got two now in the finish stage. I enjoy the direct interaction with clients, designing their dream instrument and brining it to life. But I doubt I will take anymore.

I don’t like when someone delivers late. If nothing else, that deadline, however firmly agreed on, is a nagging pressure the entire time. My health is declining as I age and never seems to get better — my work day keeps shrinking. And the demands for repairs and adjustments have exploded. The challenge to balance building with repair is extreme. I can’t seem to keep up.

In the future, I’m confident I can sell every guitar I make at a price that will keep this so-called “retiree” happy. I don’t need the burden of major project deadlines and expectations.


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I understand Tim and can relate on most levels. I worked all night and all last night too and I feel it. Will be 66 next month and now have a-fib and lots of stuff hurts frequently now too.

My plan is to do this, be a pro Luthier for the rest of the days I have left that I can do this stuff. I've secured a plan for me to do as little or as much as I want in the future when I cut back on my hours.

One nice thing about what we do, Tim is when it's time was can do less and less over time and still do what feel OK to do. Repairing guitars is something that I love though and I forget everything else when I'm working on a guitar.

Hesh wrote:
"I can't know but I strongly suspect that the Spanish heel intentionally exploits lots of additional surface area in the junction with the body for maximum vibrational transfer since nylon strings have less energy than steel strings."

I use a removable neck on my Classical 'test mules'. The fingerboard extends a little beyond the 12th fret, and there are two pins in it that fit into holes in the stub fingerboard glued to the top. The neck is restrained from folding up by a bolt in the heel to a T-nut inside the neck block. You can put a small block between the end of the body and the bottom of the heel to keep the neck from folding back with a pull from the left hand, but it makes no difference in the sound.

Does the orientation of the lower face braces matter? IOW is there a left and a right or a bass and treble side to a guitar top?

My experience says no but?

Most of us have put the lower face brace on backwards at least once via the Antes size 2 plans. I can honestly say compared to subsequent ones done correctly I really couldn’t tell a difference.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I’ve done two that were ‘backwards’ and couldn’t tell any difference either.


Steve

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Sheesh I just reread my post JF and I'm getting as bad as our friend John Hall I meant an left and right side on necks.

I suspect that no one can tell the difference BUT, but in my experience the Martin crowd is always innately aware that they are owners of the standard that all others are judged by so they can be picky about stuff that really may not mean a hill of beans.

Very cool it also sounds way easier to address a need to restore a neck angle. Would love to see this someday.