Official Luthiers Forum!

What a lovely forum, no idea why I haven't searched luthier forum on the internet, before! Plan to stick around for quite awhile .


My first post is an interesting issue. I picked up a free Rondo guitar from a friend, it's their "SX" line and from what I can tell a PRS copy. It has locking tuners, a p90/humbucker setup, and the fretwork looks solid and level. It was free because the owner tried to "level" the nut slot, so somehow we have a shelf that is too deep, too wide, and all kinds of effed up. Picture album below.

http://imgur.com/a/k1QsU

Now, I usually make my own nuts, do my own fretwork, install my own electronics for people and myself. I haven't had to shim yet, especially in all directions! I have a sizable nut blank that could make decent contact with the front and bottom if I file it at the wonky angle, should I just go ahead and not shim, opting to have a huge hunk of bone for the nut? It seems like it'd be structurally sound but I'm wary of the nut shifting out of the slot. Maybe if I used more glue than I would typically?

Thanks guys! It's kind of a weird situation, but I love these kind of problems. It's a free guitar, so if you have any wild ideas let's here them. Let's have fun with it!

Hey Hank and welcome to the forum.

Looks like someone got a little carried away... That's the biggest nut channel I've ever seen.

Seems to me that there are two approaches: 1) Rebuild the channel to proper size and then make a nut and 2) Make the world's biggest and likely ugliest nut.

I would likely elect door number one and hope that officer O'Malley of the FBI was not behind it (Cheech and Chong reference...). In rebuilding the channel I would want really great wood-to-wood contact and decent gluing too because this area as it stands now has been dramatically weakened. Matching the old finish, colors, etc will be a pain unless you simply decide that structure is the goal and this is a player making perfect color matching not all that important to ya.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Nice C&C ref .

I was leaning towards filling the channel and making a less... dramatic one... as well! As far as color matching, if I was getting paid for it I would, but for me personally I don't mind the mismatch (in fact I kind of enjoy oddity). I think I have some walnut laying around here somewhere that I've already planed. Thank you for the response!

The first time I ever fret leveled I sanded the neck pick up, years ago - so I can't even knock the guy! Guess it's good this was a cheap Rondo and not a vintage gibson .

You know I got to meet Tommy Chong and spend an evening with him and his buddy.... in 2000 but for some reason I can't remember much about that evening..... Anyone got any Doritos.... Somewhere around here I have a High Times magazine that Tommy was on the cover of that he signed for me too. Can't remember where that is either.....

What was this thread about, oh yeah.....

Yep filling sounds like a good way to go and then you can make a proper sized nut.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I saw this beautiful walnut inlay from a flooring guy while I was getting an estimate at a house yesterday, so I decided to leave my walnut scrap alone . Found some pine shims, about 1/4" thick, 3" wide 10" long. I forgot to take a shot of the piece I sawed out, I made it level with the head stock. Soft stuff, in the future I'd use something that'd level a bit better, probably some oak, but it'll do the job . Plus, less filing time which is a bonus.


Will update when I have the slot cut out.

Here's with the wood chunk filled in, I sanded until I hit the finish on all sides, then I buffed to a satin finish with some tripoli followed by steel wool 0000. I really hate gloss .

Well, the darn pine just wouldn't level out right. As this will likely become my nephew's guitar when he shows interest, I wanted something a little bit sturdier. No biggie, it took all of 2 minutes to chisel it down, then glue some oak in that was already planed to the right size. When it was set I filed it down. I decided to make the slot level with the fingerboard instead of the headstock. Later that evening, I found myself completely bored, so I said screw it and buffed the headstock to a better sheen.

Here it is in between some passes of wet sanding:




And this is it after I chiseled/filed the nut channel and finished buffing. The nut channel depth isn't at my ideal, yet. The width is simply where the truss rod cover ends when it's screwed in. Tomorrow morning I'll eyeball the depth until it looks about right. Good start, though.