A very āguitaryā neighbor said they always tune up, so if the pitch is too high, they de-tune, and then tune up to the correct pitch. When I do this, sometimes the pitch doesnāt change, then I hear very distinct ātinkā sound, and the āUnituneā suddenly reads too high again, where just a fraction of a machine turn ago it was too low.
Iāve taken to ābendingā the string a bit after each small adjustment of the machine (and that sometimes elicits a ātinkā as well). This seems to be particularly true of the A and B stringsāwhich prompts me to wonder if it might the be shape of the notch in the nut for these two strings.
I cannot help but think this ātinkā is āstick and slipā: the string announcing it is grinding away at the notch in the nut, rather than sliding cleanly through. Iāve read threads about using pencil lead shavings (which is really a combination of graphite and paraffin) in the nut prior to re-stringing. Iāve done this when I re-string my new Yamaha, but the graphite just seems to be pulled out as the string goes from flaccid to properly tensioned.
Āæ is the ātinkā the nutās plea for lubrication ?
Purchase nut lubrication, DIY with a warm, not hot, soldering iron, touching it to the paraffin, then onto the string in the nut, a drop of 10W-40, cram pencil lead into the notch.
or ā am I misreading the messages from the well seasoned Gibson?
(currently strung with flat wound āDāAddario Chromesā)
The ātinkā is almost certainly a string sticking. On that guitar, you also have a long distance from the bridge to the string anchor. Be sure to also examine that side for rough or sticky places.
If you can, loosen up a string and make sure it has a loose fit in the slot(s) side to side. This may require a magnifier to see it. If you are using larger strings than the slots are cut for, you will certainly have the trouble you are noticing. When I use pencil lead, I use a very soft lead and run it like a file into the slots where I can.
Also, WD-40 is not a lubricant. It is a solvent. There is no way Iād ever use that on a nut. I would not want it soaking into the nut or the wood. It may loosen the glues, soften plastics, and generally ruin your neck.
Soldering irons do not stay cold enough to do what you want. They are made to melt solder. That sounds like a bad idea as well.
I had been using pencil lead also as recommended by stewmac but they also said powdered graphite is good. Then had a sticky lock on a building on our new property and pulled this out of my tool box. Suddenly my brain connected the two. What is funny is that the tube of graphite is actually cheaper than a box of pencils. Less than 2 bucks at Ace Hardwear with a membership. Unfortunatly some people dont have pencils around anymore.
Iāve no idea where I got this idea, but.
I use graphite like Jason @Ontime but I mix the graphite with a very small amount of vaseline. Looks like a black grease when mixed together. Then I use a toothpick to apply a small amount to the nut slot. I just fill in the slot w/o to much excess squeezing out (which is not filling the nut slot, just a dab in the slot). After all strings are done and tensioned. I wipe the excess off, carefully with a kleenx.
This has seemed to work for me.
I suspect that the nut slot is too narrow for the string. No amount of lubricant will fix it. A little bit of work with a nut file to widen, but not deepen the slot will do the trick if I am right.
In the absence of a nut file a short length of guitar string and bit of fine sandpaper will do the job.
Skip to the 1:50 mark if you want to get right to a short demo of how to make that work.
Thanks all for your suggestions, you folks are great.
@sequences agree w/you WD-40 is not where itās at, I was thinking 10W-40 (pretty similar sounding) which is crankcase oil you might put in your car for the summer.
The bone nut is old, as in 90 years old, and the guitar has, Iām guessing, in excess of 20,000 hours of playing on it, so the nut has seen at least some use. Under a 30x hand lens it doesnāt appear to me to be binding (except maybe the B string).
I like the idea of Vaseline and graphite by @HappyCat:
locally available,
low cost
itās less prone run like oil,
yet will have a weak attraction to the graphite so the two will stay as one.
Maybe itās time for a new nut, the clearance is but 0.5mm on the first fretāor,
retail therapy:
āTake it to a luthier to get it fixed properlyā
frugal Yankee:
āsuck it up you big babyāif your father in law could make a living with it, you can certainly be a beginner with itāas it isā.
My message is still similar - bad idea. There is no way I think that applying a thing that would seep into the wood that I never apply to another piece of wood makes sense to me. This also goes for vaseline, a petroleum derivitave!
I doubt you need a new nut. Maybe some minor edge filing? As I look at the angles of the strings coming off the nut, my guess is that this problem is from a nut that was not cut cleanly decades ago, or possibly has chipped at some time.
My initial thought on the bridge half still stands though. You have at least as much length from bridge to the fixed point as the nut to tuner and that may actually be your binding point and the string has enough length in that area to stretch, then let go. You may need to place fingers separated apart, on the SAME string and then get the ātinkā to happen. This may give you a tactile way to locate the side of the string that has the binding point.
When I talked about a āsoftā pencil lead, I was thinking something like a 4B or 6B softness. I donāt think folks think about this much, but you can find these softnesses in drafting pencil leads. I know Amazon has lots of sources.
Howeverā¦ that nut is white and using a pencil lead may not be wonderful because of coloring the nut. There is also a mica based dry lube that you may want to look into. I have a container of it around somewhere. I think mine was from a store that sold firearm reloading materials. I havenāt thought of it for a few years now, but this thread made me think of it. I intend to go find it and try it on my next string change with a white nut.
ah! here it is: US site, Frankfort Arsenal
Thanks. On your post, I went out into the wild looking for micaāgood golly but you can get mica in a lot of colors. Fun how something so fundamental as ground up rock can have so many varied uses.
With the nut being white, I prefer the idea of a lighter dry lubricant (over black graphite), my local sporting goods store stocks reloading supplies ā Iāll check 'em out and throw some shekels their way.
[btw, Iāve been looking for planar vacuum tubes to go in my laptopāwhere did you find them? ]
that is not the laptop under repair! (truly - there is one behind the shot that is torn apart)
Those tubes are part of an amp design I created. My experience with tube design was for VERY high power ( over 5kW) pulsed applications. Designing a guitar amp takes a lot of additional things into account that are another world from my career. Fun for me for sure. I hope it sounds as I want once I assemble it. Simulations look good, but Iām not sure about my assumptions for EQ or distortion.
Those tubes are only good for gain and distortion. They will not deliver enough power to drive a speaker. They are around $15 per pair bought separately, or you can buy a headphone amp kit and just use what you need out of it for the same price.
90 year old bone nut with maybe 100,000 hours wear
For those so inclined to this kind of trivia:
This is the workhorse guitar of a professional swing band player, in constant use for 50 years.
His daughter said he played around 40 hours/week:
40hrs/week * 52weeks/year * 50 years = 104,000 hrsāeven if Iām off by a factor of 4, thatās a lot of hoursāa testament to the quality of Gibson construction!
Under the magnification, I can see that the slots are actually more like channels, so I think that some form of lubrication is the way to go to forestall stick and slipāIāll try the mica that.@sequences mentioned.
(this also could explain why the action at the first fret is but 1/2 a milimeter)
Probably others with more expertise can correct me if Iām wrong, but it seems to me that the slots of strings 1-3 need a bit of work to be aligned more towards the tuners. Also, the low E string seems to me to be out of its slot, so the slot might need to be filed down, or a lower string gauge should be used to prevent it accidentally slipping out of the nut. But an altogether new nut might be the easier solution.
By the way, are these older pics with the old strings on, or did you get the guitar back from the luthier with the old strings put back on it?
I noticed the āwrongā direction of those string slots too. Now, Iām going to say something really stupid: it almost looks like the nut has been turned around.
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