initial setup dimensions - - steelstring guitar

[peter havriluk]

I'm thinking (dangerous activity) ahead to doing initial nut/bridge preparation and assembly on my long-suffering kit guitar. I've seen the odd mention of 'rule-of-thumb' measurements that indicate the strings are close to where they ought to be relative to the nut and the saddle. But I haven't seen all such in one place at one time. I'd love to know how high each string needs to be above the first fret (or maybe fingerboard?), how high each string ought to be off the 12th fret, and any other dimensions I better have measured but I don't know what they are. Is there any source that anyone knows of for this sort of information?

Thanks very much.

[ken cierp]

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/zerofret.html
http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/saddle.html

[peter havriluk]

Ken, thanks very much for the links. The contents will go a long way to solving the nut/saddle fabrication and installation.

I do have one question, about the use of a 'cad' program to lay out the string slots in the nut. I am a 'cad' illiterate, and I think that the solution offered makes sense if the person wanting the answer is familiar with the cad program in the first place. Is there any loss to my purchasing a nut-layout ruler from one of the luthier vendors, like Stew-Mac, and using that? My assumption is that the cad program is trying to do the same kind of spacing that the formatted ruler offers.

I appreciate the links. Much obliged.

[ken cierp]

You don't need to learn CAD, do the math on a piece of paper. Decide how far from the edges you want the centers of the "E"'s subtract that from the width at the nut -- divide that by five and you have the distance between centers for the rest of the strings. You can spend the money on the SM ruler thing but l personally think the tempered spacing idea is a bunch of "what ever" and makes zero difference in the real world playability, and it is just a simple math trick to layout a usable linear scale/ruler --- think about it. But it works to provide unequal spacing.

[peter havriluk]

Makes perfect sense. What I didn't know was whether such a straightforward solution was the right thing to do. Thanks for the reinforcement.

[peter havriluk]

I returned to chewing on the topic again. I don't know what a 'normal' distance from the edge is for the E strings, relative to Ken's advice to me last June: "Decide how far from the edges you want the centers of the "E"'s". The low E, if centered the same distance as the high E, winds up closer to the edge, measured at the outer edge of the string. Does this matter? Should I adjust this distance to be equal on both high and low E strings? And back to today's initial question, how much 'edge distance' is routine? Thanks, folks.

[ken cierp]

I use .10" to the center of both "E",s But ---- just go to a music store play a guitar that feels right to you and copy it. There are no hard and fast rules