Gibson Nut Slot Height

Dave Johnson is the founder of Scale Model Guitars and a Guitar Craft Academy faculty member.

For this month’s tech tip, I will show you a quick way to fill and recut a nut slot in order to raise it up.

If the nut slot is exactly the same height as the first fret (which is theoretically what you're after), the string will touch the first fret. If the string is touching the 1st fret and you can play the guitar with no buzzing at the first fret, then you're there.

A slot that is cut correctly should hold the string in place at a height that clears the first fret. Sometimes a guitar nut slot will wear down over time and cause the string to rattle against the first fret, causing the open string to sound a little more like a sitar than a guitar.

There are several ways to repair this issue. You can use dust or baking soda with glue, but I’ve found that a Q-Tip works very well too. You simply tape off the ends of the nut and then remove a small portion of the cloth and roll it up, then insert it into the slot that is too low. Then flow a thin super glue into the fibers using a thin whip tip. You can find thin super glue with whip tips on stewmac.com (the part number is #0010).

You can either drop super glue accelerator on the soaked Q-Tip or wait a few minutes for it to harden. Once it is cured and solid, you will then flush cut the ends of the hard fibers with a razor blade and then recut the nut slot to the appropriate height with a gauged nut file. This process would be included in any guitar setup and it’s a handy skill to have to ensure that your guitar plays and sounds great!

Gibson Nut Slot Height Dimensions

1. Nut slots too high will mess with all notes fretted on the lowest few frets. Intonation at the bridge cant fix it. The issue is, you have to press the strings so far down to reach the frets, with significant extra stretching of strings, that they go sharp.
2. I think about.002' is perfect. Some will say that the nut can be in the same plane as the frets (with zero relief), but that can lead to back buzz. My question was aimed simply at finding out if the nut was at fret height or lower than the frets. If lower than the frets, then raising the nut would be the way to go.

Gibson Nut Slot Height Bars

– Dave Johnson