Earvana nut ordered

[Grayson]

Well, I feel like I've measured the crap out of my Jackson SLSMG now, and I bit the bullet and ordered an Earvana compensating nut for it. These are the specs I came up with:

Nut (neck) width: 1.715"
Nut base thickness: 0.178"
Nut style: Gibson
String spacing: 1.450" (outside-to-outside, with Hybrid Slinkys)
String spacing: 1.423" (center-to-center)

After recording these measurements, I purchased a Gibson retrofit nut with the following specs:

Nut width: 1.738" (this gets trimmed down by filing)
Nut base thickness: 0.188" (3/16" - may have to file this a bit too)
String spacing: 1.423" (center-to-center)

I'm very pleased that my string spacing is not going to change. I can't wait to install this nut! I cringe every time I hit a note on the first few frets of my G-string.

I also measured my Dad's Epiphone Les Paul Special II (a starter guitar, but damn nice actually) and ordered a nut for him. It's the same nut, but the base thickness is 0.250" instead of 0.188". His string spacing is going to change from 1.367" C-C to 1.423" C-C, so we'll see how that works out. I may end up doing that job twice if the neck turns out to not be wide enough to support that string spacing. I think he would appreciate the wider spacing though. I'm being selfish a bit - I wouldn't mind picking up one of those Epi LP's, but I want all my guitars to have the same string spacing, so I'm using this as an experiment. I'm paying for everything so he better not complain if my experiment fails

Anyway, the only reason I'm sharing this info is because Jackson + Earvana information seems to be nonexistent. I'm sure I'm not the pioneer here, but the true pioneers seem to be silent. I'll report on how the install goes.

[Newc]

Tech Q&A

[chrisolson]

Earvana nuts are pretty sweet - I have them on a pair of LTD's. Good tuning to be sure.

Welcome to the JCF, and ignore the man behind the curtain!!

[Nuclear Vampire]

I'm gonna put one on my KVX10. The Earvana did wonders for my shitty Hondo. I bought one for it to try out installing a nut on a beater guitar and to see if it works and it does!

[Grayson]

One thing I'd be curious to know if how many different sizes of nuts Jackson used. It would be amazingly cool if they all used the 1-11/16" nuts with the 3/16" base. It would make ordering nuts for a Jackson very easy. Alas, nothing ever seems to work out that well.

I ordered my Earvana nuts on Tuesday, but they're shipping from Washington to Ohio, so I suspect that I won't have them for this weekend. Nothing ever seems to work out that well. In the meantime, my new Planet Waves tuners are sitting around mocking me.

At the end of the day, I think my SLSMG is going to be pretty cool. It will be a mahogany neck-thru with 24 frets, ebony board, EMG 60 neck pickup, EMG 81 bridge pickup, locking tuners, Earvana nut, and JT390 bridge. Should be a damn nice guitar.

The guitar was ~$590 shipped, the pickups were ~$200, I sold the original pickups for ~$127, the tuners were ~$90 with shipping and tax, and the nut is $35. All-in-all I'll have about $788 in it.

[DonP]

I hear more about Earvana on the Les Paul forums.

Ignorance is bliss. I suck enough not to hear the difference, at least I don't think I hear the difference.

Good luck with your project and let us know if it clears up your G-string ( ) problem.

[straycat]

I was going to feitenize my model 2 strathead mutt but the measurments were dead on so I did not see the need.I have used the earvana nuts on strats and it is a good product.

[Grayson]

Well, the nut I specified in the first post fit perfectly as advertised. I had to file down the nut for about 5 minutes on an old, worn-out file I have sitting around so that the top of the nut base sat flush with the top of the fretboard, which is normal procedure. I also filed the sides of the nut just a bit since it's slightly wider than the neck out of the box. I then attached the upper part of the nut with the screws, and then glued the thing in place using good ol' Elmer's Glue-All.

What's nice about this install is that my factory nut had the strings sitting up way, way too high, and since the Earvana nuts are built to work immediately with jumbo frets, I basically got a free filing job out of it. I need a little more bow in the truss, but that doesn't bother me at all seeing as the factory setup was horrific. The new nut can't automatically cure all my problems.

I'm going to slide the top part of the retrofit nut a bit further forward for a little more compensation, but other than that the job's done.

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting a little technical here, but I contend that the point of this post is merely to record which nut we have to purchase from Earvana for a Jackson SLSMG. There's nothing technical about sharing information on which part to buy.

The sad news came when I installed my new Planet Waves tuners. I knew that you couldn't use the 3+3 tuners on an SLSMG since the screw holes were in the wrong spot, but I didn't realize that I would need 3 "left" in-line tuners and 3 "right" in-line tuners. Basically, you need to purchase two sets of Planet Waves tuners, use half of each, and I guess find another SLSMG owner that could use a set. The tuners do in fact work very well though. Unfortunately as I was installing the first tuner, which was a little tight, some paint chipped away as it pushed it's way through the surface. Frustrating! Before continuing I drilled the remaining 5 tuner holes with a 25/64" (~9.92mm) drill bit and none of the other tuners game me any problems. I glued the chip back on the headstock, and fortunately it looks fine now, especially since most of the small chip is hidden underneath the tuner's washer. I'll always know it's there though.

Anyway, I have three Planet Waves tuners on my guitar until my set of rights arrive. This gave me the odd experience of stringing up my axe with regular tuners and with locking tuners at the same time. I can tell you this: locking tuners flat-out rule the world. Furthermore, the auto-cutting Planet Waves tuners rule all locking tuners. Have you ever cut your finger on a cut-off string end that's hanging off one of your tuners (and then bled on your guitar)? It simply cannot happen with the Planet Waves setup. Replacing strings on an SLSMG is so freakin' easy now. It's a hard tail with a string-thru body, so all you do is slip the string through the body, pull it up to the tuner, push it through the hole, pull it tight, lock the tuner, and then tune to pitch. I bet I could do a whole guitar in under 3 minutes if I had the strings all laid out nicely. I'll run Planet Waves tuners on all my guitars from this point on. Definitely happy with those. Even happier than the Earvana nut this topic is really about

It looks like a few of you guys posting to this topic are relatively close to me - Cincinnati & Lexington. At least I consider Lexington close since my Dad lives in Frankfort!

[DonP]

It looks like a few of you guys posting to this topic are relatively close to me - Cincinnati & Lexington. At least I consider Lexington close since my Dad lives in Frankfort!

Shit dude, I'm just down the street from you at 747 & 129. You should have said something i have plenty of files. I don't have a peghole reamer though, and that is what you needed to enlarge the holes, but it sounds like you did well.

[Grayson]

I'm near the corner of Tylersville and Cox myself.

My drill bit didn't even have any effect on four of the five remaining holes in the headstock. On one hole it did remove some material, which I suspect was merely paint that oversprayed or ran into the hole. I think the first hole I installed a tuner in (and messed up) also had a paint run in the hole, and when I pushed the tuner up in it, it pushed up against the paint run, which of course pushed up on the surface paint, and voila.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the 25/64" drill bit is smaller than the smallest diameter of the tapered peghole, so theoretically the taper of the holes should be unaffected.

To be honest, a 2° taper seems like the most worthless taper I've ever heard of anyway.

Quick update - I've played the guitar twice since installing 50% of my Planet Waves tuners. So far only one of the Planet Waves strings needed a very slight retune, yet all three of the factory-tuner strings were about 50 cents off at the same time. The other two Planet Waves strings were still spot on since initially tuning them to pitch a couple days ago. I'm still super-stoked about how cool these tuners are.

[Bengal65]

Sounds like you are getting there! Taper on a peghead hole? I have never seen that. Interesting. FYI, I use the StewMac drill guide for pegheads. It actually works better than my drill press.

I like the Planet Waves. I put a set on my Model 2. They work great.

[toejam]

Quick update - I've played the guitar twice since installing 50% of my Planet Waves tuners. So far only one of the Planet Waves strings needed a very slight retune, yet all three of the factory-tuner strings were about 50 cents off at the same time. The other two Planet Waves strings were still spot on since initially tuning them to pitch a couple days ago. I'm still super-stoked about how cool these tuners are.

Any guitar with new strings will need a break-in period, regardless of whether you have locking tuners or not. You need to stretch your strings well (bend them, pull them up off the board), retune, keep stretching and retuning until they don't go out of tune.

[kelly user]

Any guitar with new strings will need a break-in period, regardless of whether you have locking tuners or not. You need to stretch your strings well (bend them, pull them up off the board), retune, keep stretching and retuning until they don't go out of tune.

come on joe, give him more credit than that, i think he knows what he's doing if he replaced a nut. poor, poor s

[straycat]

Howdy neighbor!!

[Grayson]

You need to stretch your strings well (bend them, pull them up off the board), retune, keep stretching and retuning until they don't go out of tune.

No doubt, but the data shows that the strings attached to the factory tuners went out of tune quite a bit, whereas the strings attached to the locking tuners hardly went out of tune after a little playing. I think what we're seeing here is how much effect the strings settling "on the posts" has. When you have to wind strings around a post, it can never be done perfectly tight. The windings will eventually pack themselves in closer together vertically, and the loops will slip tighter to the post, which I think is what leads to the majority of advantage of locking tuners. Heck, that's pretty much the only advantage of locking tuners.