Earvana Nut Height

[swarfrat]

Just bought a drop in Fender shelf nut and the nut is radically higher than previous nut. There appears to be a gap in excess of .020" between the top of the fingerboard and the bottom of the shelf extension.  I like what some would consider insanely high action (but looking to drop it a bit),  but this is more like Lap Steel action. Currently I have over 0.100" between the bottom of the low E and the top of the 1st fret.

Earvana says not to file off the bottom, but I'm having trouble seeing why this matters if height is indexed off the fingerboard/shelf and vertical alignment is held by the parallel walls of the slot. I've emailed Earvana, but I'm all ears if someone has any input (or contrarian opinions) It appears Earvana was anticipating a drastically deeper slot than what my guitar has (The guitar in question is an Ancient Zion Strat copy - it's ESP parts if you take it apart - that old)

 

[jay4321]

I've used every type of Earvana there is. Offhand I think the instructions are a little confusing. The quote I think you're referring to is, "NEVER file the bottom of the nut top." This leads me to believe they're referring to the older two-piece Earvana nuts with the base, plus a top piece you screw on. With those, you wouldn't file the nut top piece down, but the bottom. In one case I remember doing just that.

Now, if you have the newer (far nicer) one-piece Earvanas, you can file the bottom of the nut just fine as far as I know. 

 

[jay4321]

One piece.

Two piece.

If you can hold off doing anything for a couple days I can look at a couple of my new ones and see how they line up, they're not installed. Of course the one-pieces I have are self-style for Gibsons (or they're Warmoth-installed on strats).

 

[swarfrat]

Right now the height looks a bit more like this. (Pardon the dust - it's from scraping a paper shim some previous tech glued in place. That guy... if a guitar comes in with crazy high action and 13's, you might want to give the guy a call before you put those steel cable 13's at Stanley Jordan height. I can't play 13's anymore, and I'm looking for a more reasonable 'just a wee bit higher than typical' action now.)  I too thought this direction might have something to do with the older two piece nut, but didn't quite figure out what they were talking about. Your theory makes sense. In this case - as long as its reasonably square - I think it'd be ok if the shelf sets on the fingerboard.

 

[jay4321]

Actually the bottom of that nut shelf looks like it has a much smaller radius that your fretboard does also. I'd consider that you may want to flatten that a bit and most definitely file the bottom of the nut. I'm not the expert on doing that so talk so someone who is. But no way would I have that shelf sitting up a mile off the board like that.

And the nut channel itself looks angled too...

 

[swarfrat]

I think it's just perspective & DOF. Here's another shot - I got the 12" radius version.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

I sanded the one on my Les Paul til it was flush.  That one has a flat bottom, so it was rather easy.  You might have to make a radius'ed piece of wood and tape some sand paper to it if the bottom of the nut need that radius.  You might not need to have it perfect to work either, it doesn't need to be in there super tight.
Patrick

 

[swarfrat]

The bottom of the nut & nut slot itself is flat. I got email from Earvana last night saying the same thing we all are here.  Jay's explanation has to be the right one. The original verbage was not about filing off the bottom of the part in the nut channel, but rather removing material on the interface between the two parts of a two piece nut.  I'm going to try to take reasonable care that its flat and square, but otherwise its not exactly rocket science/medical grade parts here.