D L Povey Guitars | Guitar services

There is a lot of reasons why you may require a new nut as a poor or worn nut can cause tunning problems, fret-buzz and poor tone/sustain, different nut materials offer different qualities, for example:-
A bone nut will produce a warm tone with great sustain and is very hard wearing, where as a plastic nut is responible for tuning problems, poor tone/sustain and it will not be long before being the cause of fret buzz. (A discussion of what material to use will be made before fitting a new nut).
When fitting a new nut firstly the old nut needs to be removed without causing damage to your instrument. So firstly the laquer around the nut is cut with a craft knife to avoid chipping, the nut is then tapped back and forth until the glue loosens, in some cases the nut will need to be sawn length ways though the centre of the nut and wiggled out of the slot with pliars. The nut slot is then cleaned and prepared for the new nut.
The nut blank is then shaped to fit the slot perfectly, string spacing is then marked and roughly sloted with a Xacto saw. Each string is then seated at the correct height using nut files and checked that the strings run through the slots freely. The nut is then shaped, polished and glued into place.
Nut-replacement is always followed by a full set-up.

Please check out me fitting a new nut in the video below:-