No, Iām glad you did. I have had similar experiences.
When I wanted a smaller acoustic guitar, but with a rather wider neck - similar to yours, but a cheaper one, sounding nice, but it doesnāt sound as balanced as yours!) I found one with 45cm nut width and 60cm scale length. After there was a bit of a wolf note, I even tried 10s on this one after reading a post from a luthier on wolf notes.
Even the 10th with this shorter scale length and a rather low setup is very much fine. Not so easy to get to buzz as I feared before. I wouldnāt have thought this while acoustics are mostly 63cm or 65cm and have 12s strings, so a much higher string tension than mine. But probably those 11s are a really good choice for fingerstyle.
Now itās me talking a lotā¦ just to confirm your 11s choice should be fine.
Strange - no one talks about this.
Iāve had the same experience. While I thought that serious manufacturers had some ok standard, I have had two electric guitars - both cheap, but otherwise ok. One had really wide clearing from the edge, the other was much too close. So that high e string muting happened to me too.
And I state the above to share my experience that at least SOME manufacturers donāt even seem to care about a nice strings spacing versus edge clearance. It varies extremely in some cases, at least with cheaper guitars.
As I was a bit lazy, I looked at graphtech saddles, they state all the exact nut measurement data on their website and ordered already two for two different guitars to get the string spacing as I prefered. Rather high string spacing, but not too close to the edge. But I think for a 45mm nut width, there wasnāt really something. I made one work nicely for another 44.5mm acoustic, but itās not perfect.
So, maybe take a blank one and do the nut filing yourself?
But well, maybe Thomann suggests some solutionā¦
Sorry for the long textā¦ but maybe itās nice to see other have the same problems. If I can be of any assistance, feel free to ask.
@domi7 Exactly how you sayā¦ no one is talking about that too loud, but its really topic. If you dig more about this there is big complexity about how to space strings and how big space should be from edgeā¦ as I said, I am pretty sure its also caused by my not perfect technique, but who is perfectā¦
I can see standard range is between 3-4,5mm for high e or low E. Then you devide rest of mm by 5 spaces and bla blaā¦
But having range from 3-4,5 is really big game changer. So next time anyone picking up a guitar feeling it plays well or bad to youā¦ have a look on gap from the edge and maybe you will notice how much it can do.
I discussed this with ChatGPT and now I have more experiences about this. Waiting for Thomannā¦ on the other hand ready to do all job by myself.
How you saidā¦ its good to see someone went through similar problems. I can see I am not telling fairy talesā¦ at least.
So you did all the numbers already!
Same here. If the nut width alows, I aim for 4.5mm.
Looked up my file where I note all this stuff about what setup my guitars have and what my ideal numbers are, because I forget a few numbers over timeā¦
My worst guitar in this regard had 2.6mm edge to high E. It also had a few not so great frets and occasionally the high string was caught under a sharp fret edge!
And while Iām not a fan of narrow fretboards, I try to balance the numbers. (As electrics are almost always at 43mm max) Low E to edge of 3mm or slightly above is fine for me as opposed to high E.
I just wanted to say I am taking it on another level and collision between two of my hobbies happen right now.
I am modelling 3D nut for print with different hole spacing, so I can find āfreeā the best one for me and then I can put same measures to tusq or bone. All I need to solve with tests here how to scale holes, because 3D printing has some physics rules about shrink and expand, but I cant wait to have few variantions of string spaces and I can just test them.
I plan to do bigger topic for thatā¦ one day, in the end when I find āthe oneā.
And I know the plastic nut is not goodā¦ but that is not point here. Point here is to find perfect string spacing and then apply this knowledge to different material like tusq or bone.
Double andā¦ I am working on this hand by hand with topics from luthiers and ChatGPT. I am feeling really excited about this work.
I think I even had 4.7mm as my prefered high-E-edge distance and sth. like 3.5 mm or so on the low E string. And my comfortable string distance high to low was at least 36mm, 38mm was nicer. But then, 38mm+4.7+3.5 = 46mm, so Iāll have to compromise a tiny bit with a 45mm nut.
But I hope that you can find your own numbers experimenting!
If you donāt use the weakest material, it surely will work fine for some experimenting time.
Will you do several models with different distances to see what are your preferences or how will you proceed?
@domi7 Exactly. I will do few distances. First to go is low E 3,5mm and high e 4mm. I think most of moving will be with high e, because low E is not problem for me.
You are talking about 4.7ā¦ that seems brutal. Even for me. But we are all different.
By the way you dont have to go beyond nut width.
You just take nut width minus distance for E and e from edge and divide by 5. For me it means I am gonna have 7,5mm from middle to middle of all strings.
Yes, of course. Itās just a number where I also tried to find my preference - string distance.
In the calculation above I came to the result that Iād go best with a nut width of 46mm. But otherwise, I have to make compromises and I can make them on any of the 3 parametersā¦ those 7.5mm (or 37.5mm overall) or a tiny bit left or right from it.
I had two cheap electric guitars, one was 42.5mm nut width, the other 42 mm. So not a lot of difference. But the slightly wider one had a high to low E string distance of 36.5mm which I found ok (but that was the one with only 2.6mm to the edge) and the other 42mm wide nut had a 33.7 mm string to string distance and really that felt too crammed fro me.
So I felt that the manufacturers hadnāt really been reasonably balancing some parameters, just put some parts they could get cheaply together.
Thatās where I started to research my own preferences.
But happens a lot to me that I find that manufactured stuff is not so well designed. Probably mostly time and money constraints, not enough imagination sometimes maybeā¦ (But then, you often find out afterwardsā¦ I donāt claim I could design a product without any flaws)
just to confirm your 11s choice should be fine.
