Great product, Makes a lot of difference in sound and play ability. To say nothing of staying in tune. I put one on a Ovation Legend made in 1972. The guitar always sounded good but was a little tough to play. This made a world of difference. It is now amazing. I have a friend who can't keep his hands off of it. He likes it better than his Rainsong.
Had tuning stability and buzzing issues after ten years on my first bone nut. Also have always been bothered by open string vs. fretted string sounds. I play mostly flat picking/crosspicking styles and Travis style picking. The consistency of the note makes both more enjoyable for me. No buzzing lower action smoother tuning smoother playing easier bending etc... Have all been a result. Took me about two hours to get height and width of nut and fret correct. Had to get a smaller get shipped from gold tone and their customer service was the easiest I have ever experienced. Had part in two days and I am satisfied.
I bought this for a Washburn Oscar Schmidt OE-40B archtop guitar, on which the nut had broken when putting on new strings. I always wanted to try a zero-fret nut and was pleasantly surprised at how well it works. Perfect string height and tone.
I bought the mandolin version and fitted it to my Gibson. There's a lot of extra material to remove, but the result was great. Easier tuning (the old nut had tight slots for the A strings), better intonation. Later I used one of the extra frets in the package to fix a tenor guitar. For that, I simply filed the necessary ledges in the existing nut and widened the string slots. It would be nice if Stew-Mac would also sell the offset tang frets separately, for retrofitting to an existing nut.
My circa 1997 American Standard Strat always had a problem with staying in tune after whammy bar use. I tried pencil graphite and different string sizes with not much luck. I put this nut on and a set of Gotoh locking tuners and now it seems to stay in tune very well.
$34.99
