Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been learning some javascript recently and wanted to do a project with it, so I made this a nut spacing calculator.

I'm not sure how most of you who measure nuts out (as opposed to using something like the stewmac ruler) do it, but this calculator assumes the following procedure.

1.) On your nut blank that is ready for notching, mark(or cut) the location of your high and low e string.

2.) Get the "center to center" measurement. This is where the center of the treble e string will be to the center of of the bass e string.

3.) Using a ruler with a 1/100" gradient, measure out where the strings will be, starting at zero.

Anyways, like I said before, this was primarily a project to practice coding but I thought some of you might find it useful. Definitely not opposed to changing it up at all if you guys like it but want something else on it.

http://www.nilsguitarsandmandolins.com/blog.html

-Nils

Cool.

Could you do it:

Overall width of nut.

String diameters, aka gauges.

Distance from edge of low E to edge of fingerboard.

Distance from edge of high E to edge of fingerboard.

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Good going Nils!

Most pro Luthiers that I know don't measure anything for the spacing from the E's to the edge of the neck. It's a visual thing, a player thing (do they thumb over, etc), AND..... it has a lot to do with how radically the f*ctory or maker beveled the fret ends giving up valuable fret top surface real estate. We certainly don't want our E strings spaced over the fret end bevel.....

With this said for myself and many of the Luthiers that I know to use the calculator it would have to permit "eyeballing" the E's and then likely calculating everything else as a function of the distance between the E's. You may already be there in your algorithms and maybe just need a way to nix distance to the edge of the fret board and add distance between the E's.

The guys (men and women) who are really great at nut making eye ball it all and can do amazingly well. Our eyes are amazingly accurate maybe not in specific measurements but in discerning differences from one thing to another.

Good going and a fun project I'm sure.

So you eyeball at the nut, or all the way down the fingerboard to determine the spot on the nut?

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Hey Kevin! Happy New Year!

You eyeball at the nut and do a quick visual check to be sure that something untoward such as the neck being bolted on a tad crooked say on a Fender with a bolt-on neck is not an issue either. The strings are natural straight edges.

Happy new year Hesh!

So Nils, the Spacing parameter on your form is from center to center of the E strings I assume.

If we follows Hesh's suggestion, eyeball the placement of the E strings, cut those slots. Then I think it would be easier to accurately measure the distance between the inside edges of the E strings (i.e. caliper) then the center to center measurement which would rely on more eyeballing.

If you agree, then you could just change the "Center to Center" field on your form & how it's plugged into the spacing equations.

Just my $0.02

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Center to center measurements are not of any relevance to me, since equidistant centers lead to a horrendouslycrowdedfeelbetween the two bass strings.

Equidistant string spaces is what gives the best playability. This is recognized by all major manufacturers. AFAIK, among the household names, only Huss & Dalton adhere to the equidistant string center philosophy. I have owned two H&D guitars and in both cases I had to replace the nuts to make them playable.

I do realize however that not every player may be as sensitive to this issue as I am.

This is calculator works so it will give you equal distance between the outer edges of all the strings. You just tell it your center to center measurement of the two e strings. The reason I like using a center to center measurement for this is because I notch my outer strings first, to see where I want them. Typically, I don't cut them to full depth until setup, which means the low e outside edges won't be a good spot to measure from. I'm on my phone so typing is tedious. I'll explain more later.