|
I want to share my experience with a nut substitution on my E10 00SS/V that can be interesting for many people. I know that like me, many of you don't like at all the narrow 1-11/16" nut and prefer the wider 1-3/4". My E10 00SS/V was my first experience with a narrow nut and was causing me troubles. Despite I have thin fingers, I first learned to play on a classical guitar (52mm nut width, a bit more than 2") and that 1-11/16" was too much for me. I liked the E10 00SS/V quite a lot, very classy guitar with a great tone but I thought selling it many times. As a last try I decided to make a new nut with a somewhat wider string separation. First I measured all my guitars with a digital caliper and encountered that there was a considerable variation. That it's not strange as Eastman guitars are totally hand made. As I'm Spanish, I'll give you the measurement on mm, sorry about that. Consider that 1 inch=25,4mm and 1mm=2,5/64ths of an inch.
On guitars with a 1-3/4" (45mm) nut, the nut width was between 44,9 and 45,2mm and the string spacing at the nut equally oscillated between 37,9 and 38,2mm, thus 0,3mm difference, almost one 64th of an inch. Instead on my E10 00SS/V (1-11/16"=43,5mm) the real nut width was 43,4mm and the string spacing at the nut 36,6mm, thus about 1,5mm less than on my 1-3/4" nut guitars. I made a new nut and get a string separation of 38,2mm, exactly the same as on my E10D and a bit more than my E20 OM-MR-TC! It's true that now the strings are a bit dangerously close of the fretboard edge but that don't represent a problem for me. The feel now it's not exactly the same as in my 1-3/4" guitars as the fretboard still is narrower and you notice that, but nevertheless much much better than with the original 1-11/16" nut. I was rather happy with the result and I don't think anymore on selling the guitar.
If you have a guitar with a 1-11/16" nut that is causing troubles to you or you always wanted to buy a 1-11/16" guitar like a Gibson J-45/L-00 or an Eastman Slope shoulder but didn't dare, maybe this little trick can work for you. It worked for me and it's a 100% reversible modification. One pic comparing the 2 nuts:
|