I play fingerstyle guitar. My favorite guitar is a Gretsch 5420 Electromatic . For some reason the designers at Gretsch moved away from the zero fret. When You string up with 10's or 9's I guess it probably doesn't matter much because the first position will be easy with light gauge strings. My touch and style of playing requires .012's. With heavier strings while the 5420 is beautiful to see and hear the first position was challenging to play. I installed the zero glide following the instructions in the package and to my amazing pleasure the 5420 played like my '66 Nashville used to. I couldn't be happier. Thanks to the people that designed this product. The tone is great the tuning is improved and the first position action is second to none.
I put this on one guitar i built and promptly bought another for another guitar. Awesome product. Use them!
I have 3 instruments with a Zero Glide nut that I play regularly on shows and in jam sessions. My Gold Tone OB 150 has one as standard equipment from Gold Tone. Next is my Martin D custom Acoustic and next is my Washburn M3SWK F body mandolin. I did the install on those last 2 instruments. YES, you WILL have to do some fitting. Follow the instructions to the letter on this. YES, you may find it to be a pain but the gain is more than worth it. Once the Zero Glide is installed and once you start playing a few tunes, you will wonder why you have not installed a Zero Glide nut a lot sooner.
No more string binding issues, no more graphite in the slots or any grease either. You don't need that stuff anymore. No need for nut slot files either with a Zero Glide unless you get one un-slotted. You will still have to fit the Zero Glide nut so you can make it a part of your instrument. No getting around that. It is all part of the fun so enjoy the pain and take your time with the fitting. Once that is done, the action at the first fret will be perfect. Your tone will be better. You will get some sustain you haven't had before. The Zero Glide nut should be the ONLY nut to go on your instruments. I like what it does for playability and tone.
I m impressed with this. Easy to install. I m not a luthiar but I have refretted a few guitars and made some nuts and saddles. This is a pretty incredible system. I was going to cut a new nut for an acoustic guitar I just bought. I tested it and it was not sliding perfectly through the nut even though there was no ping while tuning. The way I test a nut is to strike a note then smack the string between the nut and the machine heads. behind the nut I put a tuner on the head stock so I can watch the note go up and come back. It simulates a good bend and you can watch the quality of the nut you have on the guitar. Most guitars will stick at about 6 to 10 cents above the tuned note unless you have a really well cut nut. At least the wound strings will....steel strings will usually drop back to the tuned note if the nut is decent . The nut I had on this guitar was pretty good....no pings while tuning yet it would still catch occasionally which effected tuning.