Fine Radius Adjustments on a Fender LSR Nut

The action on the low-E string of my LSR nut was a little high.  I think it's because the nut's supposed 9.5" radius doesn't match the fretboard's supposed 10" radius at the nut, or my alleged fret leveling job, which might very well have changed the effective radius of the neck.  Either way, the low string was way high.  I decided to explore a theory.  No pictures because my crappy old camera won't focus on anything so small.

No warranty, expressed or implied.  Proceed at your own risk.  Good luck.

Here's what I did to lower the action on a string.  Seems to have worked for me, except that this operation seems to have wrecked some of the springy retention ability of the retainer prongs.  I will have to be careful when changing strings forever more.  I think if I had removed the nut completely and taken the retainer finger assembly off in one piece, that might not have happened, but imagine what a pain in the ass that would have been!

1. Place the guitar on a nice smooth surface covered neatly in cloth.  The little ball bearings, once lost, will never be found again if they bounce on something hard.
2. Loosen the string and pull it aside into a neighboring string slot.
3. Pry the retainer prongs back toward the headstock a little.
4. Use a slightly-magnetic awl tip to draw out the two ball bearings.  Grab them between your pinched fingers before you lift them very high, and put them in a container.
5. Use a drill bit slightly smaller than the ball bearing cups to deepen the holes that hold the bearings.  Measure forty five times and cut twenty times.  Go a little at a time.  You can't go back.  How do you know where to put the holes?  I dunno.  I just leaned the bit into the corners ever so slightly and drilled.
6. Replace the bearings, replace the string, and tune to pitch.  If you are convinced you need to go deeper, do so.
7. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here's what I did to widen the string slots on the LSR nut.  I'm using a set of very heavy strings (12's) and I've been worried that the low string was hitting the edges of the little exit slot.

1. Steps 1-4 above
2. Use the awl to pop out the little foam dampener on the headstock side of the nut, and place it with the ball bearings.
3. Sand away with a tiny rectangular file.  Don't wreck the retainer prongs.

Your mileage may vary, especially considering that I'm just making all of this up.

Acoustic Refret

First I had to get the fingerboard all flat. I've struggled with flatness before.  This time I think I did better. Below you see my cheap aluminum level with a layer of fabric carpet tape plus a layer of 220 grit paper.

1. I use a solvent to clean the old tape scum off the level
2. I put on the carpet tape.  It sticks like a beast so hold it at one end, line it up an inch off the opposite end, and lay it down easy.
3. I use a razor blade along the edge to cut the tape flush, then peel the backing.
4. I put on the paper in 11.5" strips, then use the razor the same way to cut that flush

I made sure the truss rod was loose all the way, then I sanded.  There was a high spot at the soundhole end of the fingerboard, and another longer one from fret 1.5 to about fret 11.  By the time I was done, all the fake black ebony stain had come off, and I'd taken enough wood off that the whole idea of putting on high frets to lower the action was nullified.  Way to think it through, kiddo.

Also excellent:  the nut, which is supposed to pop off easy, did in fact pop off easy, but it took some grain with it.  I'll have to flatten that surface with a file.

Here is the first several frets.  I didn't order enough fret wire because I messed up, and the next batch didn't arrive in time for the hurricane.

Acoustic Refret, Nut and Bridge Shave

I've got an 80's Harmony acoustic, given to me by my brother.  It has a terrible high action.  The neck doesn't seem messed up, and the soundboard isn't too bellied out.  I don't want to reset the neck because it's a bit of a big step that requires tools that would cost real money:  steam and all kinds of things.  I know I could slap something together from junk, but in my experience junk (and connecting junk to junk) costs real money.

So for my next project, I'm going to try to lower the action on this guitar - backwards:

• Put gigantor frets on it
• Redo the nut to compensate
• Shave the bridge
• Perhaps convert the bridge from an adjustable-height bridge, which seems to take up precious verticality, to a fixed height
• Put in a brass plate below the bridge plate to prevent the string ball ends from tearing up the soft wood down there.  StewMac wants $12 for this but I can make one for more like 20 cents.

Here's the old adjustable bridge:

 It won't go low enough.  I think I'll have to shave the bridge down too.  That will come after the refret, once I see the action I'm getting.

Here are the strips of feeler gauge I'm using to protect the very soft fretboard against the heel of my fret-removal chisels:

I don't have a fancy fret-removing end cutter that's ground down so the cutting edges are flush with the flat face. These chisels work beautifully.  I do guess that there's a slight outside chance of a truly horrifying accident, if one of the chisels comes loose, rides up the other chisel and unzips the flesh of my forearm.  That would suck.  But I didn't get the feeling that was likely to happen.  There's not a lot of force involved in this; the trick is getting a sharp edge under the metal/wood interface.

I'll be ordering fret wire and replacement blank nut and and bridge this week.