Compensating The Nut Position.

[Blackdog]

I read in a thread about PRSi and Gibsons (in another forum) that PRSi intonate better because they have the nut moved slightly closer to the first fret. Sort of a rudimentary earvanna or something along those lines.

My first though was Bullsh*t !! But yesterday I took the digital calipers out and measured a McCarty I have. Sure enough, for a 25" scale guitar the distance from nut to first fret (center) is a good 1/64" less than the theoretical value (0.4 mm for the metrically minded) !! Not a huge difference but obviously intentional (I would expect PRS tolerances to be much better than that). I have still to measure a Hollowbody I have to see if it is consistent, but I would guess so.

Now I'm curious:

What do you think the advantages of this practice are ?? Does any of you use this trick (or any similar trick) in your builds ??

Thanks.

[WezV]

quite a lot of people do it actually, i think it might have been discussed here before

personally i am quite happy with the intonation on a normal guitar and only resort to these tricks when i feel the guitar needs it

[SwedishLuthier]

That is the way the Feiten intonation is done too. I use Earvana nuts for all my personal guitars and I have been able to convince quite a few customers to try them out too. They have never come back to complain. I also know that Perry Ormsby does something similar to the Feiten thin on his guitars. So, yeah, that is a common practice and not so unusual as one might think.

[Blackdog]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I did some searching in the forum and found quite a bit of reading material on the subject.