Bone Readymade Nut - Gibson-Style

When fitting a slotted nut you will normally need to adjust the dimensions and slots slightly to get it perfectly matched to the guitar.

It’s best to adjust the size by rubbing the nut on fine sandpaper (240 or 400 grit) on a hard surface. This will help keep the lines of the nut straight and square.

Thickness
Start by sanding the thickness of the nut, take a little off until it’s a snug fit in the slot.

Width
Once the nut fits in the slot check the width compared to the fingerboard. If it’s too wide you need to sand a little off each end until it’s level with the edges of the neck.

Height
It’s important that the slots in the nut aren’t too high off the fingerboard or it will make the guitar hard to play. The bottom of slots should be just a little higher (0.2-0.4mm) than the level of the frets. This can be checked by running a metal ruler along the top of the frets and seeing where it intersects the slots.

If the slots are too high you can sand a little off the bottom of the nut until they are the right height compared to the frets.

Slots
You may need to adjust the slots to fit the wider strings on an acoustic guitar, or to change their angle. These adjustments should be performed with a nut file.

You adjust the height of slots once the strings are on the guitar and use the string itself to compare the height of the nut slot to the height of the frets. Just push the string down on the 2nd fret, you should see a slight gap between the 1st fret and the string of about 0.1-0.3mm