Luthiers are bad ass. They can make instruments that are beautiful works of art as well as wonderful, practical tools for making music. The good ones really know what they're doing.
Some of us can't readily afford the services of a good luthier, and being do-it-yourselfers, we sometimes engage in "amateur lutherie." I am one of those, but I've found that it is easy to screw things up when you don't really know what you're doing, and you have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
I like a low action, and on one of my mandolins I cut the nut slots lower soon after getting it, because it needed the nut slots lowered. But eventually, I went a little too far, and had to fix it. I didn't want to "build up" the slot with dust or baking powder and CA glue (I've use that trick before on guitars) and I didn't want to shim under the nut with a playing card (likewise, done it before on guitars), I decided to replace the nut with a bone nut.
Since replacing the nut with a new one, I've never been happy with the performance of the A strings. I've found it impossible to keep them in unison, and impossible to keep the mandolin sounding right when playing the open A and E courses for the fifth interval and the unisons between A and E courses when playing 7th fret E on the A course.
The reason for my post today is that I finally determined for certain that at least one of the A strings is binding in its slot. I've checked for this before, and made adjustments to the nut before, to no avail, but as of yesterday and today I've determined without a doubt that this is my problem.
The way I know this is that when I tune the offending A string, I can stretch it by pushing on it between the nut and the tuner, then the string goes sharp. So what is happening when I tune up and play is that my playing (manipulation of A strings) causes slack to work a bit through the nut toward the tuning machine and makes the string go sharp by degrees as I play.
All this may or may not help other amateur luthiers out there, but I had to post about it because this small win is such a big win for me and my sanity playing this instrument! Yes, it should have been obvious what the problem was from the start ... but I swear I thought I'd covered that possibility long ago, and tried to make adjustments to the nut for it. Somehow, it is still binding in the slot. There can be no doubt now. I'll fix it.
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