Official Luthiers Forum!

I've got a customer that hates the locking nut on his guitar. He's wondering about replacing it with a Fender roller nut. Provided the dimensions line up, anyone have any reasons not to go that route, or perhaps an alternative suggestion. He's even okay replacing the locking nut with a bone nut and adding a piece of rosewood to the headstock side to make it look more like a traditional fender nut.

I would suggest taking very careful measurements. There are a bazillion different locking nuts made for about every guitar you can imagine and only a couple of versions of the roller nut. Make sure the width, radius, string spacing and everything else is the same.

I did replace a roller nut for a guy, they are a bit funky to set up. The nut action height is set with shims, I recall it was a bit tricky. You will probably find that mounting holes don't line up and its possible that the break point of the rollers won't be in the right place

Not to mention, that Fender rolling nut requires removing wood closer to the first fret to get the breakover point located correctly. I've done it once back when I was a Fender tech, and it was tricky. Later, if the client wants to go back to a normal nut, you have to fill the wood back in that was removed.

Best suggestion - make a very good bone nut, lube it, and install locking tuners. I have that on one of my Strats (Wilkinson equipped whammy), and it stays in tune well. I recommend locking tuners to my clients these days if they don't want full locking systems.

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