When I got the neck, there was a cheap plastic nut included, and looking at the shape and quality, it was obvious that I would replace this.
I would have loved to get a bone nut, but neither did I want to cut the string slots, nor did I want to ask a professional to do it for me at this point (yet?).
After some looking around, I decided to get a moderatly priced nut from Rockinger, as they seem to be a much better quality than mine, were already slotted and even came in black, which suited my idea of the final guitar:
http://www.rockinger.com/index.php?cat=WG051&product=04175-04176-04185-04186&sid3=c6b7d664db3d465ec4bd066df0228a31
The material is "Graph Tech", which is a synthetic material with a very low friction.
To get the plastic nut out, I followed some advice from the net and really carefully hit the nut with a hammer / screwdriver from all sides to loosen the glue.
There was a hint that you have to be especially careful while smacking it toards the headstock, as chances are reasonably high that you would be breaking off the back part of the wood of the nut slot in the neck.
A final careful hit from the side got the nut out without any problems.
The slot was faily clean, and I only used very few strokes with a file to get rid of the remainders of the glue.
Additionally, as you can see int he pictures on the top, the new nut is not straight / flat at it's bottom, but cureved with a "foot" in the middle so that it can be either placed in a flat nut slot, or (by simply filing off the midle "foot", in a curved neck nut slot.
I only needed to sand the new nut down a bit to make it slightly more narrow, then took a file to bring the width down to the witdh of the neck.
For now, I will keep it as such, but I might revisit nut size and placement once I adjust the string height later on.
I would have loved to get a bone nut, but neither did I want to cut the string slots, nor did I want to ask a professional to do it for me at this point (yet?).
After some looking around, I decided to get a moderatly priced nut from Rockinger, as they seem to be a much better quality than mine, were already slotted and even came in black, which suited my idea of the final guitar:
http://www.rockinger.com/index.php?cat=WG051&product=04175-04176-04185-04186&sid3=c6b7d664db3d465ec4bd066df0228a31
The material is "Graph Tech", which is a synthetic material with a very low friction.
To get the plastic nut out, I followed some advice from the net and really carefully hit the nut with a hammer / screwdriver from all sides to loosen the glue.
There was a hint that you have to be especially careful while smacking it toards the headstock, as chances are reasonably high that you would be breaking off the back part of the wood of the nut slot in the neck.
A final careful hit from the side got the nut out without any problems.
The slot was faily clean, and I only used very few strokes with a file to get rid of the remainders of the glue.
Additionally, as you can see int he pictures on the top, the new nut is not straight / flat at it's bottom, but cureved with a "foot" in the middle so that it can be either placed in a flat nut slot, or (by simply filing off the midle "foot", in a curved neck nut slot.
I only needed to sand the new nut down a bit to make it slightly more narrow, then took a file to bring the width down to the witdh of the neck.
For now, I will keep it as such, but I might revisit nut size and placement once I adjust the string height later on.
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