A while back, I received an email with a question and I thought the answer might be useful to a wider audience. The question was about what height to set the string slots on a fretless bass. There’s some information to be found about string-clearance heights for fretted instruments but not really anything much for fretless.
Let’s consider a guitar fitted with a zero fret. If you construct and set this up as I believe you should, you level all the frets—including the zero fret—at the same time. That means the zero fret is in the same plane as all the others. The zero fret is (relatively speaking) the same height as the first fret, and the second, and so on.
Be treated like a zero fret and the slots lowered to exactly the same height as the rest of the frets. Somewhere along the line, we started leaving them a little higher during a good setup (or a lot higher during a bad one). That’s ok. A few thousandths higher doesn’t cause any problems worth worrying about and the tiny amount of extra headroom is welcome for the open strings.
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So then, given a fretted instrument, the zero fret and the regular nut see the strings sit on (or almost on) the fret plane. Any other height and setup is handled at the bridge saddles and with relief.
And so to fretless. If we follow this logic through, we could slot that nut until the strings touched the fretboard. The fingerboard is, after all, the equivalent of the fret-plane in this case. The string height setup will then be done at the bridge and some relief can be dialled into the neck if needed.
That said, most of the time, we leave the nut slots just a fraction higher than this. Like the tiny amount of extra height on a regular fretted-instrument nut, a little extra height on the fretless gives a bit more headroom for the open strings.
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So, long story short: As long as your fingerboard is well levelled and setup, you can bring the nut slots waaaaay down to the point where you might be nervous to look at them. 😉 As with most setup parameters, if it’s your bass, keep playing as you lower the slots and see how they feel as you go. If it’s someone else’s try get a feeling as to their preferences and tolerances. Fretless basses—and their players—are different beasts and a little
Going on is likely a good thing but do make sure. You may want to balance things a little for some players, maybe giving a
As mentioned in the aside at the start of the last paragraph, this advice assumes the rest of the setup (and especially the neck) is in good shape.Here's a gnat's-eye view at the face of a nut as seen from the leeward side of the second fret. The slots for these two strings are cut so that they completely support the string.
Nut Slotting Gauge
The sketch above relates to fretted instruments, but the basic principles are no different for violin family and other unfretted instruments. I'll try to explain the clearance in a minute.
Having the slot cut too high above the frets (or an unfretted board of some type) means that the act of pressing the string down to the first few frets actually stretches the string, raising the pitch and throwing the intonation off in the process. Ideally, the nut slot height is identical to any other fret. But remember that strings can 'saw' themselves through a nut just through normal use. I ordinarily leave a nut slot a little higher than necessary at first, to allow for the string to cut itself a little lower. I also avoid synthetic and elephant ivory, both of which are too soft and rubbery to make good nuts for steel strings.
These slots are all too deep, but the B is still so high it doesn't play in tune, so someone shoved a piece of ebony under it to try and correct the intonation. Big Ugh for this one.
Bass Guitar Graphite Nut 45mm
People often comment on certain strings (e.g., mandolin A strings, guitar G strings) being more troublesome, always seeming to go out of tune during play. Mandolin A's are always the most troublesome because they have to make compound bends from the nut: back as well as to one side. And the length from the nut to the post being the other important factor. And being plain strings, they tend to bind if the slots aren't cut right. (The D's, being wound, tend to refine their own slots.)
And with a poorly cut nut, when you tune up, the tension on the length of string between the nut and the string post is greater (per unit of length) than the part you actually play, that's between the nut and the bridge. After getting the pitch just right, a bit of actual playing works the string, making the tension on both sides of the nut equalize, and voilà: you're out of tune in mid-phrase. It has nothing to do with the tuning machines, which people just love to blame, but everything to do with setup, particularly how precisely the string slots at the nut are cut.
A quick word about creaking guitar G strings: this issue is fading as elephant ivory nuts are fading. Bone is superior to ivory for a nut material because it's harder and burnishes better. Ivory is soft and actually registers the imprint of string windings. That irritating creak is the sound of the windings skidding over grooves impressed inside the nut slot. Once again: setup is everything. (You can resurface string slots in an ivory nut by inlaying bits of with pearl or bone, if you like.)
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Left: like the messy nut above, the nut material is too high. You need only enough to support half the diameter of the string. Anything more is just in the way. When the string is way below the top of the nut, you have great difficulty telling whether it's seating properly.
Next: a slot that's cut with a saw has a roughly flat bottom and also affords poor acoustic coupling. Saws seldom match the precise width of the string, which can roll side to side in the slot.
Next: strings will work their way down a v-cut, often bottoming out on frets (or the board, as the case may be with fretless instruments). The signal transfer is compromised because of the limited contact, and the string sizzles on the fret or the board. They also tend to bind and squeak. They can ruin your day.
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Right: the slot really fits the diameter of the string, the nut material does not go above the halfway point of that diameter, and leaves the string a trace of clearance above the fret or the unfretted board surface.
If you hold any string down on any fret of a well set up instrument, you'll see that same preferred clearance at the next fret up.
Before going further, here's how to correct a string slot that's too low. Often it's wiser to repair a blown slot than it is to replace the whole nut.
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Quick fixes like some kind of dust (bone, acrylic, baking soda) with superglue are really temporary. It takes little more effort to implant a little patch of bone (or even pearl) into the nut and recut the slot. It's as good as the original, and if done well, is quite invisible.
I have a couple of saws I use for widening and deepening in preparation for an implant. One is a fine hacksaw blade in a short handle, which is for wider strings. It leaves a nice flat-bottomed slot. The other is a backsaw such as one would use for cutting fret slots, which does the same and is good for finer strings. Avoiding hitting the first fret, assuming there is one, I cut down below the blown slot, sometimes almost to the board itself, angling the saw back a bit. Then I prepare the piece of bone (or whatever: ebony for a violin or cello) by carefully filing a piece of the material with a fine flat file until it slips snugly into the slot. I usually use old saddle scraps for this. A drop of CA and a tap and it's in there:
The slot itself needs to be shaped in a way that it not only fits the diameter of each individual string, but also such that the string has firm contact with the nut at the very front of the slot. This defines the end of the vibrating string length, and if it's not right, intonation will be impaired at the very least, and you may well find your string sizzling like a sitar string.
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The point of this is to offer a smooth surface for the string to travel from the tuning machine to the critical point of final contact at the front of the slot, where it is held firmly to define the end of the vibrating string length.
Strings have to make a compound bend at
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