Quote:
Originally Posted by the.ronin
To sand, I use a block of marble with the sandpaper taped to it. Clearly even then I ended up off on the sanding.
|
Technique is more important than absolute flatness of the sanding surface.
Hand sanding has the tendency to round things - along the length and width of the thing being sanded. Technique needs to counter that.
Variations in how the object, such as a nut or saddle, is being moved across the sandpaper introduces the roundness. Rubbing back and forth will tend to round things. Pulling only, rather than alternating push/pull, will eliminate much of that tendency.
An aid I find very useful is to use a block - plastic, plywood, wood, etc. - that is placed on the sandpaper. The block has a flat face and an edge that is square to it. The flat face is placed on the sandpaper and the nut or saddle is held against the square edge. The nut or saddle is then pulled across the sandpaper, while firmly held against the edge of the block. This maintains the desired angle on the bottom of the nut or saddle. By applying uniform pressure in the center of the nut or saddle, while pulling across the sandpaper, it is fairly easy to achieve a square, flat-bottomed nut or saddle.
Quote:
|
if your nut slots are too high, your open position chords will be slightly out of tune from the added stretch it takes to press the strings down.
|
I believe what Jeff meant was that if the
strings are too high at the nut, intonation is affected, rather than if the strings sit in slots that have an excess of nut material.
Quote:
|
...there are no glaring intonation issues (12th fret harmonic on the A is like 10 cent off or something).
|
A good ear can distinguish between pitches differing by about 2 cents. 10 cents is "way off" for a guitar - that's 1/10 of a semitone.