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Years ago I put a zero fret on a guitar. The issue I found that no one has mentioned yet is the wear factor. I found that the zero fret developed string grooves in it in no time, lowering the strings and defeating the purpose I used it for in the first place. So if you go that way, make sure your frets are plenty hard!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Thank you! That's what I was missing.

I shall go back to preaching the way of nut compensation.

Also, I can now update my first post that the intonation benefits of a compensated nut still apply when you use a capo.

That's right zero frets do wear out, just like conventional nut slots, and at some point the zero fret needs to be replaced. We replaced one last month and it's easy enough to do, lift carefully the zero fret and pitch, replace, glue, clamp, do a fret dress and you are good to go. OTOH when a nut slot gets low fixes range from replacing the nut (a bit less time than a fret dress depending on who's doing it) or fill the nut slot. In a bind a gigging musician can have a nut slot filled with what we use, dental fillings, UV cured dental fillings, in a few minutes. A zero fret with the fret dress will take perhaps a couple of hours. So not much difference in the serviceability of either approach in my view. We don't use commercially available nuts and instead make each one custom for the specific instrument so it takes a bit longer how we do it but no biggie.

Sure there have been some nicer instruments in the past with zero frets and likely are today as well. But.... on balance likely millions of very cheap imports were made with zero frets too much like the laminated side thing so regardless of one's own opinion regarding what a zero fret represents value proposition wise there is a market perception to overcome again just like with laminated sides and that is that zero frets are often found on cheap imports.

Regarding a harder zero fret stainless can be used here but beware something around 50% of folks will claim that they can hear a difference with stainless wire and to them it can sound tinny.... We've done a bit of testing with this notion as well and the jury is still out as far as I am concerned as to if there is a perceivable difference between stainless and NS wire. But that's a question for another thread/day.

There is nothing wrong with using a zero fret if that's what floats your boat. Other than the perception thing seems a bit of a wash to me in that it's true that a zero fret can wear out but so too does a conventional nut. Zero frets do provide the benefit of likely playability over poorly cut nut slots and zero frets make the string height a no brainer. But.... convention today is still the conventional nut and depending on who's your client you may have to have explain your reasoning for a zero fret more than one may wish to do....

Jose Ramirez III recommended shimming nuts with paper from business cards and shimming saddles with strips of wood veneer. This was not an expediency, but part of the fine tuning of the set up, if needed. When I am reasonably careful with business card shims, I cannot even see them.

As with many things Lutherie there has to be consideration of what's appropriate for the instrument as well. Let's talk about nuts in this respect for a minute.

Some guitars have had the nut finished in place with G*bson coming to mind. If a nut slot gets too low AND the instrument has a finished in place nut with no shim present it may be prudent to preserve the existing nut and not remove it either because it will mess up the finished nut ends and transition to the neck. This is one example of where filling a nut slot is preferable over removing and shimming the nut.

Another example are the thousands of Martins with Ivory nuts. Again preserving what is without removing it is preferable to removing and shimming the ivory nut.

The best example would be a new instrument. If a Luthier delivers a new instrument with a shimmed nut or saddle it would be a real turn-off to me personally. Shims are not always the best answer and if one is paying for a new instrument with well crafted parts and a decent set-up that's exactly what they should receive with no shims....

OTOH cheap, keep em singing instruments that may need the nut shimmed to do a set-up it's perfectly appropriate to shim a nut here. My preference when shimming a nut is to not use a business card although I have.... and instead I prefer to us very thin real wood that matches the neck, mahogany, maple, whatever. I also make the wood shim with the end grain not exposed so that it looks better with a dab of finish on it.

Shimming saddles can be a different matter because some instruments rise and fall noticeably with RH changes. Mario P. ships his creations with two saddles, a summer saddle and a winter saddle with the winter saddle being slightly taller. Great idea and it's what I've been doing too. Sure a shim and some instructions would do the trick too but if there is value in that bone, compensated saddle seems to me that shimming is less than ideal again with a new instrument.

Lots of folks use business cards and as I said I have and will at times too. But again it depends on the context of the repair and the specific instrument as well. I always get a chuckle out of vendors who stop by to try to sell us something.... If they survive me and my directness.... when they hand me the business card I've often wondered if I should tell them that they just resupplied me with nut shims for cheap instruments.....

Lastly we have a shop made nut slot depth gauge that Dave made that sits on frets 1 and 2 and measures the depth of any nut slot. So before we even have the nut off if that's what we are doing we know in advance how much of a shim is necessary. This can be helpful too in determining who's business card to cut up....

If you moved the zero fret to fret 5, You would not need to tune it to 10.01kg. You would still tune it to 10. The 0.01Kg is from fretting which would not need to happen behind the zero fret. You tune it to the note you want that would be the same tension since you are no longer having to press it down by the amount dictated by the action of the 5th fret (since it is now the nut/zero fret its action is zero. Further, the action at the 12th fret (now the 7th fret is lower that it would have been with the full scale length so it would not take an additional 0.02kg of tension to fret it. This is where the capo example breaks down. The capo doesn't actually make a fret a zero fret, it just frets a string at that fret with the resulting increase in tension dictated by the action.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

But the 10kg open string only played in tune because it had a compensated nut, shortening the string and sharpening the note. After cutting it off at the 5th fret, there's no nut compensation, so it makes sense you'd need the tension a little higher for the pitch to be correct.

Looking at it another way, since the bridge didn't move, and the 5th fret didn't move, the speaking length of the string didn't change, which means that the tension must not change either. It must remain the same as it was with the stretch.

You are correct that stretching down to the 12th-turned-7th fret wouldn't cause a .02kg tension increase. But because the open tension is now 10.01kg, the 12th-turned-7th still gets it to 10.02kg.

John's point is the key. The shortened instrument really does have good intonation without a compensated nut, but it has fewer total frets, and if you add more frets they'll be significantly flat. Then if you move the bridge a little closer to the neck, and nut a little closer to the bridge (and tune back to 10kg because the open string is now shorter), it fixes the high frets, and you're back to a compensated nut like you started with.

Fylde Guitars / Roger Bucknall are held in very high regard by Brit folkies - they're top class instruments. I think this is interesting:
www.fyldeguitars.com/blog/zero_frets.html
He refers to Martin Carthy's old 00-18. When Martin (guitars) produced a Martin Carthy signature edition he insisted that it had a zero fret. I just did a Google image search and yes, Martin seem to have produced at least one instrument with a zero fret.

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"There is hope in honest error .... ". Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
http://www.ianchisholm.co.uk

Interesting how diverse everyone is on this topic. I use a zero on the Selmer style guitars as is traditional. I think they look just fine. I would gladly build one for a customer as well. My thinking was that I would level and finish the frets and then tap in the zero fret as even when I build a nut I keep the bass strings just a hair north of level to the frets. A lot of players like to pound on an open EAD chords so I give them a little more room.

Shawn Lane's Vigier had a zero fret AND a zero radius for that matter.

I think it does have the stigma of cheap guitars but in the luthiers shop zero fret or not you still have to make a proper nut. Sure it might be a little easier to slot for a zero fret but on the other hand you have one more fret to install too.

Dennis, I see what you are saying. I missd that we were talking about a compsensted nut in your example. . . for some reason I though we just had a zero fret.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

http://www.zeroglide.com/

Here is a link from the Ramirez site. Metal zero fret and nut prefabricated as one to fit in same nut slot as without zero fret.

Yeah nothing wrong with using zero frets. You're right JF too that you still have to make a nut for string spacing although the nut slot depths become moot in the final adjustment sense.

Deciding to use a zero fret also precludes one from not using a zero fret in so much as the amount of material that has to be cut off the end of the fret board for a zero fret will make the board 1/2 the fret tang width too short. Of course this could be fixed too by adding material to the end of the board and removing the rest of the zero-fret slot and it's associated material.

The only down side besides not having the ability to individually adjust each nut slot depth that I see remains the public perception and the fact that for decades in at least the US cheap imports used zero frets leading many to believe that it's use is indeed associated with cheap import instruments. Although this is not a biggie.... public perception and especially preconceived notions.... when it comes to Lutherie can at times be very..... difficult....to.....overcome.....