MusicMan compensation nut

    Hey folks, this one goes out to owners of musicman guitars and those having a compensated nut installed.


    A few years back I tried the Earvana nut, but did throw it over bord soon after talking with a guitar tech, that explained to me I will not get proper intonation without altering the nut - cause the compensation just is incorrect.


    Since then I have cut several bone nuts myself, mastered to file nice nut slots (and I do fretjobs and refrets with pro tools myself now too).


    Now on my new musicman stingray guitar I am confronted with a compensated nut again. Maybe they managed to calculate the perfect position for the nut? Or will I have the same troubles as with the Earvana nut?


    To make it short, almost the same story: e, b and g string do work o.k. - but the offsets of D, A and E string are way to exaggerated. Especially the low E can not be intonated right in fret 1-3. It will be always flat here.


    It's not to much work for me to get the problem solved by de-compensate those slots and cut again. But I am wondering, if I am the only one who has issues with that? So I met my buddy owning a MM Luke. It turned out, that he noticed the same but tries to balance it out with saddles. So on his guitar the saddle of the low E is way to far moved forward - resulting in sharp notes around 12th fret and still flat in frets 1-2 :rolleyes:


    So guys what do you think? Can this really be true? Do the famous endorsers all have their guitar tech to fix it, or maybe it is just me. I also noticed that @Guidorist has moved the saddle of low E way off forward also on the newer videos!? Could be some other reasons here too, of course.


    EDIT: Solved for me. See post 6

    Edited once, last by Ibot39 ().

    I've always found the equivalent nuts on the Music Man Stingray basses (newer models only) to be just-fine. I've therefore assumed that the Stingray guitars' ones would be OK too.


    It's obviously always gonna be a compromise, but I can't help but wonder if a different brand and / or gauge of strings might help. When I switched from 10s to 9s on my superstrat I was told by an "expert" that intonation settings will be identical, and yet I had to make huge adjustments, many strings being a compromise between being sharp on the lower frets and flat beyond, say, the 15th.


    Are you able to live with the compromised intonation settings you came up with, Tobi, or do you think you're going to have to tweak the nut?

    Quote from Monkey_Man

    I've always found the equivalent nuts on the Music Man Stingray basses (newer models only) to be just-fine. I've therefore assumed that the Stingray guitars' ones would be OK too.


    It's obviously always gonna be a compromise, but I can't help but wonder if a different brand and / or gauge of strings might help. When I switched from 10s to 9s on my superstrat I was told by an "expert" that intonation settings will be identical, and yet I had to make huge adjustments, many strings being a compromise between being sharp on the lower frets and flat beyond, say, the 15th.


    Are you able to live with the compromised intonation settings you came up with, Tobi, or do you think you're going to have to tweak the nut?

    Yeah, a lot of things have an influence here. Strings are one - and of course personal playing habits / technics...


    But there is no more (not much) compromise anymore - I already fixed it :rolleyes: I now have good intonation over the whole fretboard. But I had to DE-compensate E, A quite a bit, D a little. The g-string needed a better nut-slot angle and a tiny bit more contact area to reduce undesired vibrating of the string behind the nut.


    Maybe on other MM guitars the slots are a bit higher? Or the nut a tiny bit further away from the first fret. But on the buddies Luke it was the same. That is why I am wondering, if others ecperienced the same. And the saddle (low E) of Guidos Luke looks "odd" too.

    Edited once, last by Ibot39 ().

    That's great that you've found a compromise (with your nut tweaks too) that you're happy with, Tobi.


    Can't provide any feedback on the MM guitar nuts, mate; only used the Stingray bass comp. nut, and it seems fine. That said, I don't really see the big deal with bass for these nuts. The ear is less-sensitive to pitch when it comes to low frequencies, so I can't help but feel like it's a bit of a gimmick. There'll be some super-fussy bass players who'll swear by them 'though, I expect.

    Quote from Monkey_Man

    ...
    The ear is less-sensitive to pitch when it comes to low frequencies...

    And it is less "obvious" for my ears if intonation is flat somewhere, but still it should not be off too much. Sharp is horrible, but can be "compensated" by slightly relaxing the string by "pushing" it towards the bridge. Such subleties are particularly important for me, when playing fast, blurred and nebulous Black Metal :thumbup:;)

    o.k. - after I had a closer look at how the MM nut is build and how the fretboard end was cut, I think I do understand what happened. The nut has an pin in the middle of its bottom! And the fretboard end was not cut 1000% straight. So the nut (with the pin in the middle) was fitted sliiiiiightly turned to the fretboard side on the low E. And cause of rotation is turned to the headstock side on the high e side.


    So on the low E the nut is closer to the 1 fret, what further compensates (meaning more flat). Combine this with lowest possible cut slots and I got the flat notes in frets 1-3. Solution is sliiiightly turning the nut (around the pin) back to balance out (but "damaging" the paint-over-the-nut). Or work on compensation (of the compensation :D ) of the slots that show a flat note. Because of the low cut slots there is no problem on the other side of the nut.


    This all just for those interested - sometimes I wish I just could ignore those issues. But it is also good to understand and than be able to fix stuff.

    Edited once, last by Ibot39 ().

    Like 1

    Compensation of the compensation time it is, then. Well done, Tobi; you sure got to the bottom of it mate.


    I hope my Stingray doesn't have any such issues, although I'm lucky 'cause it's only the fretless that has the comp nut as it's a more-recent model than the fretted one, which I was super-lucky-enough to score from a pawn broker 15 years ago. Only decent thing I ever found in one of those shops, and would you believe it, it looked like it'd never been played!


    I'm assuming any possible minor inaccuracies in the nut won't matter as much on a fretless 'cause one is always adjusting pitch in realtime, knowingly and unknowingly.


    Also, sorry about my statement earlier that I'd not noticed any problems on the bass version of the nut. I'd forgotten that the fretted version was made before MM introduced it to the Stingray line.