CNC milled factory installed compensated nut

[dbw]

The British use American dollars as napkins, toilet paper, and kindling. 

 

[RLW]

The British use American dollars as napkins, toilet paper, and kindling. 

We colonists may be doing the same before the end of the year...

:sad1:

 

[GoDrex]

BUT it looks exactly like what I would buy. No reason it should cost much more than a normal nut though. Does a custom nut cost as much as a mexi strat in the UK?

well the figure I came up with is based on the fact that the site says you have to pay 100 pounds to get it installed by them PLUS if they determine that you're guitar needs a fret dressing and setup, that's another 60. They don'tsell outside of their shop (yet) - from what I can tell. Maybe I'm wrong?

 

[jimh]

Funky nut anyone........
http://www.guitarsetup.co.uk/TheFunkyNut.php

Sorry, not flying to the UK to pay 160 pounds ($320) for that...

 

The nut that you are talking about is from our very own forum member FunkyPhil.

 

[NonsenseTele]

Godamn it!!!!!!!!!

I really like this Funky Nut, but as I live in Brazil, I won't have this thing on my guitars and on the guitar I'm planning to do for a dude... I got really bad impression for Earvana and don't know if I'm going to use it anymore (and I have 4 nuts here...)


And about dollars and pounds:
You gotta think in pounds not dollar, I've gone in England and £1 = R$4.... If I had thought everytime I would buy something how much it would cost in reais, I wouldn't buy anything, not even food... To englishes £100 is alike US$100 or R$100.... So, now you know what is a poor currency        US$ 1 is usually R$2, but it's getting nice... last week was R$1,66

 

[DiMitriR33]

there is no such thing a perfect temperment. the western scale is a mathematical accident, a guitar is an even tempered instrument although intonation is never perfect an ideal guitar never has a perfect harmony. there are many ways to tune a piano and most are called well tempered, they have better harmonies but only in some keys, there is always a wolf key or wolf tones in each key, any attempt to something better will put a deficiency somewhere else, and a guitar is a particular challenge do to the many different chord shapes. if you stick to one chord shape the open strings can be tune to pure intervals and you can move that shape up or down. good theory for slide players but most people wont stick to one shape.

other alternative is to have each note and there for each fret at each string intonated to the notes of a well tempered piano and have a particular set of wolf notes that you live with. or you can go fretless and like a violin you can tune open strings to pure harmonies and can use any chord form as long as your fingers hit the notes correctly and you have perfect pitch.

or you can stop worrying about intonation, get it close and play your instrument!

This is an issue of intonation not temperament. Western music and the guitar is based on an equal temperament scale for obvious reasons. The problem is that individual mass and string tension affect intonation and therefore the ability of a guitar to actually achieve equal temperament in the first place.

The "true tempered" guitar that was linked does not actually employ a true temperament scale. It's really an equal temperament scale, like any regular guitar, except it is more accurately intonated. The Earvana nut achieves exactly the same thing as this fancy neck, the only difference is that it's slightly less accurate. 3 notes on an Earvana fretboard are 1 or 2 cents off from a TT neck. Considering the massive difference in price, I'm not sure it's worth the fuss.

What is worth the fuss IMO is finding a compensated nut that is made of a decent material.

maybe i went off track, my point is that perfect intonation giving even temperment is less than ideal. if you put all the effort into intoanting an instrument by using all wavy frets why settle for even temperment. even-temperment losses perfect harmonies and key color. key color being disonances that make the music interesting. even temper has disonences but they are based on interval, they are the same in all keys.

i recall somewhere seeing a guitar that the builder added extra frets in select locations to get true intervals in chords. looking at the fretboard it made little to no sence but offered some new chord options. i thought that was cool.

now realize even this tt guitar is a compromise in intonation, neck relief, nut height and string height affect how much a string bends. there can be no perfect solution.

i'll also add that i haple addition. ve had guitars intonate so good that an electric tuner (albiet a cheap one) didn't show any bad notes, that was without a compensated nut. if you want to mess with compensated nuts fine, i'm not knocking that being it is a cheap simple addition. just don't expect it to be a universal cure all.

 

[DiMitriR33]

ok maybe i went off on another tangent, point was perfect intonation is still a compromise, well temper is a compromise, even temper is a compromise, compromises make the music more interesting, you can live with it, or you can obsess over how to make the best compromise.

 

[Alfang]

All of you that want to wipe your ass with a dollar, if it wasn't for that dollar, you'd all be spending marks and speaking German

And as a tax paying red white and blue blooded USMC vet, I am about tired of bailing all you sorry asses out of the worlds problems.

If we bring ALL our troops home, you will all be screaming for help in 3 years or less

dbw, am so surprised you'd say such a thing, I know your joking, but i don't get it

 

[tfarny]

Um, Alfang, actually what's happening right now in world finance is really freaking bad for the US. China and Japan (mainly) have been paying for all our US spending spree since the 80s (bailing OUR asses out) and the bills are starting to come due. The dollar is worth less right now that a CANADIAN dollar, dude. That's because the center of world finance is shifting, maybe long-term, away from the US as the center, partly because it's becoming apparent that US consumers can't really get any further in debt and will have to stop buying all the stuff that other countries make that we don't. I don't think DBW was being unpatriotic but rather commenting on the sorry state of the value of our currency. Oh, and I just paid $4.20 a gallon to fill up my station wagon.

I don't want to get into a political discussion, either.

 

[dbw]

Yes tfarny hit the nail on the head... I'm not saying anything bad about the American dollar (I love each and every one of my American dollars) in the abstract, I'm just pointing out something which is objectively true... the American dollar is extremely weak right now compared to the euro, the pound, the yen, and even the Canadian dollar.  This is a Bad Thing!  Domestically our economy is OK (not great) but on the international stage we've lost a lot of the economic clout we used to have.  This is something the USMC can't fix, nor can Bush, Clinton, Obama, McCain, nor Alan Greenspan himself!  The dollar will recover, there's just not a lot we can do about it at the moment... except maybe not buy British compensated nuts.

:doh:

 

[nathan a]

ok maybe i went off on another tangent, point was perfect intonation is still a compromise, well temper is a compromise, even temper is a compromise, compromises make the music more interesting, you can live with it, or you can obsess over how to make the best compromise.

I agree with you in the sense of temperment. Equal temperment is the best compromise, certainly for a guitar player. However, when it comes to intonation, though still a compromise, you've got real options. Standard nut etc, intonated really well, is pretty decent. But to my ears, that's not good enough. I'm not much of a lead player, I'm mostly chordal stuff so intonation becomes a huge problem. Compensated nuts make such a huge difference in intonation that I'm okay with obsessing over them, because they really make my ears much happier.

 

[arkivel]

I emailed Earvana a few weeks ago. Richard personally wrote back within a couple of hours to answer my questions and was polite. I was impressed by this level of attention to customer service, but the complaint didn't seem to register. I explained that roughly half of the guitar world finds the Earvana nut material to be too soft. He countered with this:

"The material we use is the same as used by Graph-tech it is a very hard plastic. This is far superior to corian and has a better tonal characteristic and is very similar to bone. We have tested a lot of materials and chose this material called Poylphynalinesulfide it is the hardest and highest temperature plastic that can be molded. It would also not be feasible to cut bone or corian nut in large quantities for the large manufacturers."

Now it seems to me that if this is the case, there is either a quality control problem going on with a few batches, or a design flaw with the two piece nut.

My question therefore is:

If you have experienced problems with your nut, what STYLE of Earvana nut do you have, and where and when did you buy it?

anyone?

 

[GoDrex]

I think the OEM strat ones might be like graphtech, but my cream colored two piece one was definitely not like a graphtech nut. Grpahtech nuts don't come in cream (I don't think). I have a black two piece one that I ordered for my LP (that I'm not going to use) and it MIGHT be the graphtech material.

I got the one for my strat directly from Earvana - the one for the LP was from warmoth. When I replaced the Earvana with a Graphtech on my strat the difference was huge. It's far better sounding and playing (stays in tune better).

 

[tfarny]

Black two-piece for strat, ordered directly from Earvana: made of kids toy plastic. Have had it reslotted twice. Different techs, both expressed their bitter hatred for the earvana.
But whatever, I'll just go back to regular ones till they or somebody else figure it out. Or wait till I win the lottery and am on vacation in England with my guitar collection handy, then I'll see that guy previously mentioned. 

 

[arkivel]

I think the OEM strat ones might be like graphtech, but my cream colored two piece one was definitely not like a graphtech nut. Grpahtech nuts don't come in cream (I don't think). I have a black two piece one that I ordered for my LP (that I'm not going to use) and it MIGHT be the graphtech material.

I got the one for my strat directly from Earvana - the one for the LP was from warmoth. When I replaced the Earvana with a Graphtech on my strat the difference was huge. It's far better sounding and playing (stays in tune better).

Graphtech makes nuts with two different materials. The black one is called a "Tremnut" and is made with a Teflon material. The white one is made from a material they call "Tusq". I assume "Tusq" is what Earvana was referring to.

Just to be clear, do I assume correctly that you had a two piece white nut on your strat?

 

[Funky Phil]

I have watched this debate with great interest.

Yes the Funky Nut is my invention.
In defense of the price (£100)...

1  £100 is a typical BFTS installation price in the UK.
2  The Nunky Nut is made from Delrin ("Slipstone", from Stew Mac), which has very low friction and is more hardwearing than Graphtech.
3  The Funky Nut is a labour of love to make (about 4 hours!), starting with an oversized rectangular blank, using no power tools, as the Delrin "furrs up" when sanded or filed.
4  It's made to fit each guitar individually, with the individual string compenstion measured from the first fret, eliminating problems with incorrect original nut placement. For this reason, it would be difficult to sell by post!
5  The additional £60 charge for a fret dress...whta's the point of fitting The Funky Nut if the frets are shot?

Anyway, just thought I'd chip in with my (not unbiased) opinion  :rock-on:

 

[GoDrex]

I think the OEM strat ones might be like graphtech, but my cream colored two piece one was definitely not like a graphtech nut. Grpahtech nuts don't come in cream (I don't think). I have a black two piece one that I ordered for my LP (that I'm not going to use) and it MIGHT be the graphtech material.

I got the one for my strat directly from Earvana - the one for the LP was from warmoth. When I replaced the Earvana with a Graphtech on my strat the difference was huge. It's far better sounding and playing (stays in tune better).

Graphtech makes nuts with two different materials. The black one is called a "Tremnut" and is made with a Teflon material. The white one is made from a material they call "Tusq". I assume "Tusq" is what Earvana was referring to.

Just to be clear, do I assume correctly that you had a two piece white nut on your strat?

Why do you have to assume anything when I wrote it? Maybe the Tusq material is used on the OEM versions.

 

[nathan a]

I got my earvana from warmoth, it's the black two-piece kind. No problems thus far with wearing down. It's only one year old though.

 

[NonsenseTele]

In defense of the price (£100)...

1  £100 is a typical BFTS installation price in the UK.

I told them to move to UK, Pounds is way more stronger than dollars  :evil4:

Really would like to have it in my guitars, Phil...
Where are you in UK? Im planning go live there in two years (that time I'll have a european citizenship) if I start to work with guitar buildings do you get me a discont if I send you all my guitars?  :laughing7:

 

[Funky Phil]

I'm in Bolton, in the Northwest of England.

Sorry, no discounts for multiple orders....just like Warmoth  :icon_jokercolor: