Chordophone Nut and String Spacing
From “Inside the Bass¨ in The Bass Handbook
The nut determines how far from the edge of the fingerboard the outer strings lie, and also the spacing across the fingerboard.
To know where (and what) the nut is, see 20241215165631-Composite_Chordophone_Hardware_Components. The nut has an important role, and its determining the spacing among strings on the fingerboard. The nut determines this spacing by the placement of cuts or slots across it upon or within which the strings lie or are clutched (Ashton 2005, 19).
There are some common kinds of specifications for designing these slots or cuts on the nut for the string placement (Ibid):
From “Inside the Bass¨ in The Bass Handbook
Some makers employ an equal-string nut cut, whereby each nut slot is cut equally between the centres of each string. Others prefer to space the nut slots taking into account the actual string thickness. The resulting nut will then have unequally spaced slots but the player will feel each string under his hand at an equal distance.
That is, two of the most common “nut cuts¨ are (Ibid):
- Equal-interval nut cuts in-between the centers of each string
- Unequal interval nut cuts based on the thickness of each string
nut_cut chordophone_nut chordophone_nut_cut string_instrument_nut chordophone_strings music musicology
bibliography
- Morrish, John, ed. “Inside the Bass.” In The Bass Handbook: A Complete Guide for Mastering the Bass Guitar, 1st ed., 11–44. San Francisco, CA: BackBeat, 2005.