fdesalvo
Hero Member
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Another quick drive-by posting. I do miss hanging out here! Kids have me so busy, but it’s a good busy. The kind where good laughs and love cost a man in the form of eye bags and premature melty face aging. Totally worth it for you younger cats reading.
A while back I decided to try the ol’ 1-5/8” nut width with a round back profile. While this made for the most comfortable of all the combos I’ve tried a’la warmoth, I found the spacing a bit cramped. This set me on a journey to try a variety of string spacing options on the nut.
I purchased a few disposable ones to test and bought the stumac string spacing rule, which is a great value. I went slightly wider to extremely wider, the latter of which adversely affected tuning stability, as the strings angled off to their respective tuning posts. At the end of the day, I returned to the 1-5/8” graphtech nut the neck shipped with. It was better than all the other options I tried.
In parallel with this, I was considering the move back to heavier gauge strings and bought a few packs of rotosound reds (11-58). After stringing them up I was astounded. Actually, I was stupefied. Somehow the feel of the larger strings made it easier for me to locate the strings along the neck. Now I have finally found my ideal neck.
The 59 in the skinny width feels like I remember my friends 60’s Strat. In 1-11/16”, the feel is very wide for me and obstructive in the hand without contouring the treble end of the profile. Even then it’s a handful.
The only other curiosity remaining is going back to a straight radius. The compound radius has been kind to me, but I’m still curious about going a bit rounder. For now, I’m completely happy and have no excuses to not focus on practicing.
Hope all’s well, gang. Apologies in advance for not being able to respond in a reasonable timeframe haha!
A while back I decided to try the ol’ 1-5/8” nut width with a round back profile. While this made for the most comfortable of all the combos I’ve tried a’la warmoth, I found the spacing a bit cramped. This set me on a journey to try a variety of string spacing options on the nut.
I purchased a few disposable ones to test and bought the stumac string spacing rule, which is a great value. I went slightly wider to extremely wider, the latter of which adversely affected tuning stability, as the strings angled off to their respective tuning posts. At the end of the day, I returned to the 1-5/8” graphtech nut the neck shipped with. It was better than all the other options I tried.
In parallel with this, I was considering the move back to heavier gauge strings and bought a few packs of rotosound reds (11-58). After stringing them up I was astounded. Actually, I was stupefied. Somehow the feel of the larger strings made it easier for me to locate the strings along the neck. Now I have finally found my ideal neck.
The 59 in the skinny width feels like I remember my friends 60’s Strat. In 1-11/16”, the feel is very wide for me and obstructive in the hand without contouring the treble end of the profile. Even then it’s a handful.
The only other curiosity remaining is going back to a straight radius. The compound radius has been kind to me, but I’m still curious about going a bit rounder. For now, I’m completely happy and have no excuses to not focus on practicing.
Hope all’s well, gang. Apologies in advance for not being able to respond in a reasonable timeframe haha!
