New Tusq nut for Fender Telecaster

I have just refretted this maple board Telecaster. At the request of the customer I left the fretboard lacquer intact as it was virtually undamaged. I had hoped to get away without changing the nut but the 1st string slot was too low.

The old nut tapped out easily enough and I cleaned up the slot and sized a pre-slotted Tusq replacement to fit the slot. Tusq nuts are generally oversized and need to be cut down slightly.

Once fitted, the string slots needed lowering with nut files to approaching the correct heights.

The top of the nut was now much too high and the treble strings would have sat in deep slots so the nut had to be filed down

and polished with Micromesh pads.

The guitar was then restrung and the nut slots carefully lowered to the correct heights.

Finally the guitar was tuned to pitch, the setup adjusted and was ready to play.

I have to say that if you didn’t know this guitar had been refretted, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell!