Earvana Drop in nut for warmoth neck (whats your thoughts?)

[Cagey]

I have a couple of guitars with them.  I do not really notice enough difference to make a difference really.

I did a bunch of research on these things some time back, and from what I found, it shouldn't make any audible difference. It's measurable if you have sensitive enough equipment, so Earvana isn't lying per se, but then a lot of things are. For instance, there's a difference between 72.137 degrees C and 72.138 degrees C, but humans can't sense it. I presented my findings on another forum, and was soundly trounced for it. So, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to try one. The worst thing that can happen is I spend more money than I had to on a nut that doesn't do anything to write home about, but since I have to have a nut anyway, it's not the end of the world.

 

[Dan025]

I have a couple of guitars with them.  I do not really notice enough difference to make a difference really.

I did a bunch of research on these things some time back, and from what I found, it shouldn't make any audible difference. It's measurable if you have sensitive enough equipment, so Earvana isn't lying per se, but then a lot of things are. For instance, there's a difference between 72.137 degrees C and 72.138 degrees C, but humans can't sense it. I presented my findings on another forum, and was soundly trounced for it. So, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to try one. The worst thing that can happen is I spend more money than I had to on a nut that doesn't do anything to write home about, but since I have to have a nut anyway, it's not the end of the world.

no i think that was here not another forum, it's a matter harmonies not the ear sensing an exact frequency in my opinion, you wont here two different frequencies just a oscillation that comes from the phase shifting in and out. but you can only get so many pure harmonies. i think it is a waist of time, if the intonation is better you are simply coming closer to a temperment that is far from perfect in the first place...

if you think it helps then do it, if you dont hear the difference then why bother, plenty of people have recorded music on non compesated instruments and people listening to the record never complain.

 

[Cagey]

Yeah, I've got to do it at least once or I'll never know. If it works for anyone, it should for me because I use large frets. I'll find out in late June or early July when the new neck shows up.

 

[RU36]

I have too will post my findings shortly as well

 

[kboman]

I really want to try an Earvana nut. Playing open chords on any guitar is an excercise in pain for me :sad1:

 

[RU36]

Got my earvana nut yesterday!

I ordered it directly from earvana's web site and they sent me the wrong size. (its a conspiracy to make me wait longer to play my new build)
Gotta wait another week or so!
:tard:

 

[tfarny]

Generally the people who do the math behind Earvana are skeptics; the people who get one and try it are sold to varying degrees, usually depending on how much time they spend with open chords. I can't remember anyone saying they got one and couldn't hear the diff.
There is a difference between being able to distinguish two pitches 5 cents apart and hearing a perfect fifth harmony that is 5 cents closer to perfect than it would normally be.

 

[Superbeast520]

I have used the first version of the Earvana nut and have to say it is quite obvious that it does what it says it does, .....the catch is...if your the only one in the party your jamming with that has the Earvana, your going to be slightly different in pitch than the rest of the strings in the band, yes you will be the one with the truest chord tones and scale runs etc. but if everyone else sounds equally in key but you sound different, then whos right and whos wrong???

Im not saying its going to be so blatantly obvious wailing at high volumes but it will be noticable to you after a while, I decided to quit using the Earvana when I realised it changed how unison bending and certain chords sounded when jamming to Stevie Ray records, he does not use an Earvana nut, and I started noticing some of the licks I usually jammed  along with, sounded different than when I had a traditional nut on my guitar and played the same licks.

I actually thought the Earvana thing would catch on with more people as it really does sound noticably better or more in tune, but since, I have realised its unlikely I will run into many guys using the Earvana to jam with,  and much more likely that I will end up jamming with guys who have a traditional nut, so rather than be the odd guy out, I opted to use a traditional nut and really fine tune my setups, with optimal nut slotting, very precise fret leveling and action adjustments, and really accurate saddle intonation with a good strobe tuner. Now my guitar sounds so surprisingly sweet I cant believe I ever thought I needed an Earvana Nut to begin with.

If I were to use an Earvana Nut on a nice Warmoth neck I would definantly get a model that dosn't require altering the traditional nut slot, that way you always have the option to go back to a traditional nut if you decide it dosn't fit your needs, and you wont have to buy a new neck to do it.

 

[RU36]

I have used the first version of the Earvana nut and have to say it is quite obvious that it does what it says it does, .....the catch is...if your the only one in the party your jamming with that has the Earvana, your going to be slightly different in pitch than the rest of the strings in the band, yes you will be the one with the truest chord tones and scale runs etc. but if everyone else sounds equally in key but you sound different, then whos right and whos wrong???

Im not saying its going to be so blatantly obvious wailing at high volumes but it will be noticable to you after a while, I decided to quit using the Earvana when I realised it changed how unison bending and certain chords sounded when jamming to Stevie Ray records, he does not use an Earvana nut, and I started noticing some of the licks I usually jammed  along with, sounded different than when I had a traditional nut on my guitar and played the same licks.

I actually thought the Earvana thing would catch on with more people as it really does sound noticably better or more in tune, but since, I have realised its unlikely I will run into many guys using the Earvana to jam with,  and much more likely that I will end up jamming with guys who have a traditional nut, so rather than be the odd guy out, I opted to use a traditional nut and really fine tune my setups, with optimal nut slotting, very precise fret leveling and action adjustments, and really accurate saddle intonation with a good strobe tuner. Now my guitar sounds so surprisingly sweet I cant believe I ever thought I needed an Earvana Nut to begin with.

If I were to use an Earvana Nut on a nice Warmoth neck I would definantly get a model that dosn't require altering the traditional nut slot, that way you always have the option to go back to a traditional nut if you decide it dosn't fit your needs, and you wont have to buy a new neck to do it.

thats a good point about the relative pitch with the other guitars in the band.

How would you describe the unison bends sounding different?

 

[Superbeast520]

Its not so much different in the bend it self, but that a guitar without an Earvana nut dosnt have as precise a harmonic vibration between string intervals, so when you take 2 already dissonant notes and pluck them together as in doing a unison bend the dissonance is noticably different than it is compared to the dissonance of same intervals on a guitar using the Earvana Nut, its especially more obvious when holding one note and striking another and bending up to that note.

The Earvana does sound better or more in harmony, but when you want to recreate whats recorded as in jamming to licks on record like cleaner blues stuff, it starts to become noticable that the Earvana and a traditional nut do have differences, when you start to compare the little nuances in particular licks. Im not going to say it sounds bad because it dosn't, just that if I was going to use an Earvana nut to jam or record with other other strings in a band, I would want all the strings to either use an Earvana or not use it.

But then again guitar players get picky about which batteries sound better as well...lol    ....I prefer Duracell.....so you can take this with a grain of salt...lol

 

[AprioriMark]

I have this on my new LTD Viper, and it's weird how it makes some chords sound so much better, and other ones... sound weird.  I'm not sure if it's not my ear being used to it, or my hands auto-compensating out of habit, but for instance, open C sounds really odd to me with this nut.

-Mark

 

[swarfrat]

How does it do from the 12th fret up?

 

[rockskate4x]

My hands had to get used to not compensating chords on my earvana nut. Just tell your fingers to relax and try again. It's so worth it...

 

[jay4321]

How does it do from the 12th fret up?

Pretty much like normal. Like I was saying before, most of the value is in the open chord area in the first few frets, especially on unwound G string. Everything fretted up there doesn't sound slightly sharp like it used to for me.

Another comment I git on it was that chords sometimes sounded "clinically clean" when playing them. (Fair enough point, I thought. After all, AC/DCs got entire records where things are a little out of tune). So far the biggest difference has been on a Gibby scale LP though, and I'll take clinical on that over nasty Am chords for sure.

 

[RU36]

I just strung up my new build with a Earvana gibson style drop in shelf nut.
Its a warmoth headstock and 25.5 scale.

Its a very good fit and it is a very noticeable upgrade on the intonation of the guitar.

Well worth the money in my opinion

 

[lilguitar]

It's been awhile since anyone posted on this topic, but I thought I'd add my two cents since I just installed the drop in Earvana on my Warmoth LP tonight.  I've intonated the guitar in the past, but hadn't checked it before the install because I was going to be intonating it again for the Earvana.  I have Sperzel locking tuners, so rather thn take the strings off, i was able to loosen the strings and install the Earvana.  Dropped in the Earvana, didn't glue it, just wanted to see the fit. It actually fit perfect!  Tightened the strings and intonated.  The first thing I noticed was that my string action was raised significantly...almost 2mm!  While I pondered how I would remedy the string height I played the guitar and loved how wonderfully in tune the guitar was.  

I decided to put the old nut back on while I looked over the Earvana to see what would need to be filed.  It looked as if not only the bottom of the nut would need filing but also the bottom lip that rests on the fingerboard.  I honestly don't think there was enough material on the lip to file down...if there was it would be dangerously thin I think.  I contemplated just making the string grooves deeper.

I decided to tighten the strings on the old nut and see how it compared, fully expecting nastiness...especially because I wasn't going to intonate the guitar again. I couldn't tell the difference.  I decided to check the intonation at every fret, every string up thru the first 6 frets...perfect!  Really?  Perfect!!  WTF? REALLY!?

I can't say that the Earvana doesn't work, but my guitar definitely doesn't seem to need it.  The reason I bought the Earvana was because I assumed my guitar was plagued with intonation imperfections like "99% of all stringed instruments"...that and my G-string was catching in the groove of the nut and thought it be worthwhile to checkout the Earvana in the meantime.  Makes me wish I would have checked the intonation right before installing the new nut.  

Can anyone explain this?  The neck length is 25 1/2" with 6105 fret wire.

 

[Cagey]

The corrections the Earvana makes are very small - beyond the limits of human hearing in most cases, so you need instrumentation to measure it - so just noodling around you'd never know the difference. Where it starts to show up is in the resonances and dissonances created in various chords, mainly the "cowboy" chords down by the nut that include open strings. It's noticeable then, and the difference is pleasing.

 

[Rickgrxbass]

It's been awhile since anyone posted on this topic, but I thought I'd add my two cents since I just installed the drop in Earvana on my Warmoth LP tonight.  I've intonated the guitar in the past, but hadn't checked it before the install because I was going to be intonating it again for the Earvana.  I have Sperzel locking tuners, so rather thn take the strings off, i was able to loosen the strings and install the Earvana.  Dropped in the Earvana, didn't glue it, just wanted to see the fit. It actually fit perfect!  Tightened the strings and intonated.  The first thing I noticed was that my string action was raised significantly...almost 2mm!  While I pondered how I would remedy the string height I played the guitar and loved how wonderfully in tune the guitar was.  

I decided to put the old nut back on while I looked over the Earvana to see what would need to be filed.  It looked as if not only the bottom of the nut would need filing but also the bottom lip that rests on the fingerboard.  I honestly don't think there was enough material on the lip to file down...if there was it would be dangerously thin I think.  I contemplated just making the string grooves deeper.

I decided to tighten the strings on the old nut and see how it compared, fully expecting nastiness...especially because I wasn't going to intonate the guitar again. I couldn't tell the difference.  I decided to check the intonation at every fret, every string up thru the first 6 frets...perfect!  Really?  Perfect!!  WTF? REALLY!?

I can't say that the Earvana doesn't work, but my guitar definitely doesn't seem to need it.  The reason I bought the Earvana was because I assumed my guitar was plagued with intonation imperfections like "99% of all stringed instruments"...that and my G-string was catching in the groove of the nut and thought it be worthwhile to checkout the Earvana in the meantime.  Makes me wish I would have checked the intonation right before installing the new nut.  

Can anyone explain this?  The neck length is 25 1/2" with 6105 fret wire.

First off, the Earvana -only- affects the intonation of open strings, more specifically (as Cagey mentioned) the intonation of open strings in relation to fretted strings.  The science relates to just versus even tempering, which is a long, boring read, but suffice to say, the guitar is designed to sound well in most keys by sacrificing a little tonality in certain keys, sounding (very slightly) sharp in certain situations and flat in others.  The Earvana tries to compensate for this discrepancy by tweaking the scale length of the open strings.

In other, less dull words, the nut has no bearing on how your fretted notes intonate, and I would be frankly surprised if your guitar didn't fret in tune.

Edit-- I'm not saying the Earvana is rubbish or anything, just that it isn't a magical piece of plastic that makes your guitar play in tune.  But if you play a lot of open chords, it may be worthwhile.  And since you've already got it, you may as well use it.  In other words, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

 

[swarfrat]

In a nutshell, what the Earvana (and Buzz Feiten and others) does is compensate for the extra string tension introduced into the string inherent in the angle created at the first few frets. I'll put in my 4 cents here (drum roll) - it makes a difference in open ringing distorted chords. Anyone who doesn't think a few cents matter should be condemned to listening to the guitar solo from Layla over and over 24/7 for a week or two.

 

[lilguitar]

Thanks for pointing out that my guitar should fret in tune anyways and that the intonation affects only the opern strings.  Someone mentioned only being able to tell the difference with instrumentation, but honestly if you can't tell with a tuner...what instrumentation are you suppose to use.  I get the math and physics behind it all, perhaps I will install it again in the future...I will definitely hang on to it.  I don't think I'm going to be able to live with the action as high as it was without altering the nut quite a bit, which I simply don't have time or energy to do right now. 

I did think that someone earlier had a good point about playing a perfectly intonated guitar in a band with another slightly less than perfect guitar or bass.  Not sure it matters, being that almost 99% of what you are use to listening to on the radio for the last 5 decades has been with unaltered guitar nuts...including the beloved Layla ;-)

Thanks for the expanded cliff notes everyone and Merry Christmas!