MAINTENANCE AND MODIFICATIONS MADE EASY
Your guitar’s performance will make or break your sound. Keep the most important parts shipshape with our easy tweaking tips
Lesson 16 Reduce nut friction
If you’re finding that a string suffers from erratic or unstable tuning, it might well be because the string is catching in your guitar’s nut. Sometimes this can necessitate the nut being filed, or even replaced, but before you get extreme, try lubricating your nut slots. You can buy bespoke nut lubricants to do this of course, but a quicker, easier method is to use a pencil in the nut slot of the problem string – the graphite in the pencil lead should smooth up the travel of the strings on the nut. It’ll give you steadier tuning and smoother string bends.
Lesson 17 Improve tuning stability
Did you know that having too much string wrapped around your tuners can cause tuning stability issues, and so can having too little? To reduce the risk of the string slipping when brought up to pitch, aim to have between two to five turns of string on each tuner post: two or three turns for wound strings, four or five turns for the thinner strings.