I built a fretless bass years ago with a zero fret and told my friends it was a zero fret fretless bass with one fret. The look on their faces was worth the price of admission. ;)
I installed a zero fret onto one of my guitars recently (even did a video on the process, it wasn't a zero glide, just a cheap steel fret and I modified the existing nut to fit it...) and it's been working wonders ! my intonation is perfect now, the guitar feels great to play, and the sound on the open stings is noticeably better ! 10/10 would recommend
My Gretsch 6120-1960 had a zero fret and I absolutely loved it! You honestly could really tell a difference when setting it up and getting the action dialed in.
I have a Mosrite copy made by a luthier with the zero fret and it plays like butter ! It's my only guitar with this feature and I just love its timbre.
Put a capo on the second fret (in between one and two) of your guitar. Tune your guitar to F#-B-E-A-C#-F# (One step up) with a digital tuner. Now take off the capo and check the tuning with your digital tuner. Most guitars will be out of tune. Now you see why the "Zero Fret" is the best thing you can have on a guitar. Not to forget how much better the action is on a Zero Fret guitar. This is why alot of folk guitarist play with the capo on the second Fret.
Good for you guys! I've really come round to zero frets. I've encountered one on an old Japanese Archtop I restored this year, a Teisco from the 60s that I worked on last year (I did the refret of that one in stainless) and on a Strandberg, which is about as contemporary as guitar design gets (stainless again). All of 'em work just fine. The Strandberg one was a higher fret that needed lowering, but it was an easy job. Basically, I cut in slots with fret files to get the action a hair above where the owner wanted it, then sanded the zero fret down until the divots were gone and crowned and polished, after which it was perfect.
I too have suffered the stigma of being a "Zero fretter". But now, with professional help I am coming to terms with the ignominy. People in the street no longer bother me, but the hurtful words from my family were a knife to my soul. Currently in a 12 step programme to rid me of this invidious curse. Pray for me please.
I install a Zero Glide nut system from Gold Tone in all my setups. It combines the Zero Fret with the nut and it works. Zero Glide now has a stainless steel zero fret option. The action at the first fret, if you use the proper size fret of the 4 provided in the kit, will give you perfect action at the first fret. No string slot files are required unless you purchase the unslotted version. I have installed these on acoustic guitars, Dobros, mandolins and Teles. Its my choice for a nut. I tried brass but it is a pain to cut the slots. I like the Zero Glide for ease of install and what it does for my instruments, Thank you Texas Toast Guitars for bringing this up. You guys ROCK!!!
Zero Glide zero frets wear out in a week! Even the stainless steel ones. Much to my dismay because they really set a great low action! Kiesel used ss zero frets on their early Vaders but quit using them because of wearing grooves quickly. They even offered to change it to a regular nut for free!
I have a 1959 Gibson C-1 classical guitar with a zero fret, it was factory installed, and it plays really well. Now I’m thinking about putting one, a Sintoms stainless steel fret, on my Tele. It’s for me a better option than trying to cut a bone or Tusq nut, which is difficult to do if you don’t do it very much. Good video guys.
I have installed 2 "Zero Glide" nut replacements on my Sterling guitars that have trem units and it definitely has more sustain, it's a little brighter in tone and it stays in tune very well. I'm a believer!
@@TexasToastGuitars They actually have a stainless steel zero fret now. The nickle silver does wear and it's doesn't take long to get a slot worn in it. It's fine as long as it's high enough off the 1st fret as it wears. I like the zero glide. It helps intonation and rings brightly. It makes more sense to use the stainless zero fret. It won't wear quickly.
@@cugir321 exactly the same experience for me. Installed a ZeroGlide on a partscaster and it quickly developed grooves. Replaced it with their stainless steel version and the problem was solved instantly. Colour me impressed…!!
@@80Days Stainless fret wire is the way to go with zero glide....no doubt. Don't waste your time with the nickle stuff. Even though it does work......I've had one on for 4 or 5 years but has grooves.
Roger Bucknall of Fylde guitars, England has been making high end handmade acoustic guitars with zero frets since the 1970s and has talked at length about the advantages in terms of tone and action. He also reports that a properly made string guide for a zero fret is as exactling as cutting a bone nut (i.e. it must be the right depth, width and camber, as well as being the right distance from the zero fret). He does not use stainless steel zero frets and has not experienced the ding problem described here. I believe he attributes this to correct cutting of the guide, since this leads to no greater pressure than at other frets (in fact, it is likely that other frets will get more wear, since they experience more impact. Also, as you guys suggest, there's no real reason for having a high zero fret (unless you want a high action at fret 1 for some reason). After all, we don't have fret 1 higher than fret 2, fret 2 higher than fret 3, and so on and on. That sort of buzz problem is sorted by relief.
Huh? Really? The string is always in contact with the zero fret and it will wear grooves WAY before the other frets! It's a great idea if they could come up with a fret material that doesn't wear grooves in a week!
My 1998 Vigier Excalibur has a zero fret and bearing fulcrums on the Floyd Rose style locking tremolo bridge and nut. It is the fastest, most stable guitar I've ever played or owned, bar none. It stays in tune forever, even through the most radical dive bombs and pull ups on the tremolo bar and sustains for days. I will never sell it, and it's become the only electric guitar I play. Oh, also it doesn't have a truss rod system either, instead it has a carbon fiber insert the entire length of the neck, and I never have to set the relief because of temperature and humidity swings. Okay, I've bragged enough on my guitar.
The guys can't seem to appreciate the different, brighter sound created by a metal string resting against a metal fret vs a plastic or bone nut. But this is much more obvious on an acoustic guitar. If you have any doubts about that then you've never used a capo on an acoustic guitar. The biggest difference I've noticed, besides the brighter sound, is the low string action on the first fret. Sure, a person can file down a plastic nut so that the strings are at the same height as a hypothetical zero fret, but after just a little wear on the nut the strings will start to buzz. The ping demonstrated can be a problem but not as likely with the zero glide zero fret since the fret and the nut are one unit, therefore very close together. That makes it almost impossible to move the string horizontal to the zero fret. Lower string action on the first through fifth fret results in much improved intonation. see these charts at.. goldtonemusicgroup.com/zeroglide/ Obviously I'm sold and loving it. If you're still worried and zero fret wear, go with stainless steel.
Im having a very amazing custom headless being built that will have evo gold frets and a Zero fret. I had no idea until I started watching videos that it really makes perfect sense.
IMHO the MTM nut design from Strandberg is probably the most well engineered; each string has its own independent hardened steel nut groove piece, and the action can be easily adjusted and locked into position with a set screw.
Nick K the wound bass strings of the set, especially in 7,8 strings, will have the core of the string slip out of the winding with those designs. Almost everyone's headless guitars have that now. Michael Sankey has designed a locking system that involves a screw and he free sources the idea so that someone will improve further. The strings get threaded through a block at the necks end party the nut and the tuners are behind the bridge. The screw doesn't press down on the strings only. It presses them down and screws them into the tuner via the thread wall so you have torque and pressure holding them in place
Ideally, the zero-fret itself should not be the exact same size of wire as the regular frets. It should be slightly taller, the same as how conventional nuts do place the string up a bit from the first fret.
Brian May' s Red Special features a zero fret. Nuff said. It uses a slight string angle over the zero fret, straight string pull and locking tuners and gets great tuning stability with the vibrato bar. This is something you guys missed; a zero fret and straight string path means low friction with no sharp angles for the strings to bind up on.
Hi Christian, I own BM Red Special.. love it, but its zero fret developed a couple of grooves under g and b string causing annoying ping noise when bend..do you know any good solutions to fix this ? Cheers
I have a 1965 Framus Star Bass 5/150/ often refereed to as the Stones Bass, it came with a zero fret. To me a nut doesn't make sense, what happens when you change sting gauge.
I needed a new nut on my Strat, after years of abuse from experimenting with different string gauges. I had a Zero-Glide kit put in - and I love it! The open and fretted strings all sound the same, and the action at the first several frets feels consistent across all the strings, because the heights of the strings at the zero-fret is exactly the same. Yeah, a lot of cheap guitars in the 1950s and 1960s had zero-frets. But you can get cheap guitars today with lousy regular nuts, too! There are good products and bad products, good workmanship and bad workmanship.
I have other guitars with zero-frets, including a 1979(?) aluminum neck Kramer bass. One of the great advantages is how the action at the nut area is perfectly consistent across all the strings, instead of the slight imperfections and variations you'll get with conventional nuts. It all just feels right.
It will if you use 430 grade stainless... it is a ferritic stainless steel, offering standard corrosion resistance. It is often used only in decorative applications.
I feel the zero fret on my acoustic makes strings much easier to bend especially at the closer frets like frets 1-5 bends .. i suppose because the tension is less ??? please advise
@@TexasToastGuitars I put steel frets on a old eko acoustic with a zero fret- medium 13 to 56 strings and a decent setup and dam I can bend those lower frets strings surpisingly easy.... more easy than a vintage tokai strat with 7.25 radius and a bone nut and 10- 46 strings ! I suppose I use the strat 7.25 mainly for chordal stuff any how. seems interesting though as I was expecting super easy string bending all over the neck !
It's the friction. And as such the tension is slightly more closest to the nut. When you press metal inside a bone, plastic, or whatever nut, the string frictions against both the walls surrounding the string and the bottom. On a zero fret the strings bottom is the only thing that slides very easily over the zero fret, since it is metal agains metal, slightl more slippery. And if you have stainless steel, even less friction.
In the 70's I was playing a Guild S-100 (stock) and a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe that I bought new from the Music Store where I gave lessons. I traded the Les Paul for a couple of other guitars (Guild S-300 D & S-300 AD) and an original Mesa Boogie combo. it was worth it. I still have the S-300 AD but play Music Man Silhouettes now.
I've seen some more and where it's really helpful are 12-string guitars. Intonation is just spot on, saves a lot of the work making a 12-string nut. Again, should be stainless steel since you have even more tension on that zerofret. If it's not too round and it's mirror polished, chances of getting divots are minimized.
@Leon thecat Only harder is not what you're looking for. The company with the Big G once had lots of new fretwire made, being proud how hard it was. They didn't listen and with a certain degree of hardness it wears differently, it gets brittle and it wastes away quicker than more ductile alloys. The stainless steel alloy could be much harder, but it's a goo compromise to form it and work with it and getting long lasting frets too. Balance is the key or else you sit on tons of fretwire that you can't use in your factory.
The plastic nut on my guitar cracked and broke. I glued it with super glue, filed it with a jewelers file to the radius of the neck, with a slight curve to compensate for intonation. Dropped in a “zero fret” made from a new stainless steel 20” bicycle spoke. Perfect! It’s a compensated zero fret! Intonation is now perfect, and the tone is great! $1.00 invested.
The idea is that a fretted string stops on metal and the unfretted string would stop on bone or plastic... usually . Of course lots of other materials could be used for a nut but you know what I'm talking about
My very first guitar had a zero fret. It was a Framus Strato 6 that my parents bought for me new in the mid 1970s -- I think in 75. It taught me a lot about guitar, including much of the negative side ... but I guess I'm just a guitar-playing masochist, because I still play without making a dime!😎 Anyway, I owe you guys thanks because you explained something about that first guitar that I hated and thought I caused -- that string jumping you mentioned. My 5th string used to do that all the time; I just learned to pop it back really quickly. I learned a LOT of fault management skills back then, because otherwise I couldn't play at all! I lost that guitar many years ago and I often wish I had it back so as to find out what I could do with it now that I have so many more tools and so much more knowledge than I had then!
Depending on string gauge and tuning I sometimes find it necessary to cut nut slots slightly higher on lower strings which you can't do on a zero fret. Also, depending on break angle, heavier gauge strings can ride off the back edge of the zero fret, exaggerating action at that point and possibly affecting intonation. Just a couple considerations.
You should press with your finger right behind the witness point and in front of it, then the thick gauge string will go beyond it's elasticity level (where it goes back to original shape and form once released) and get into the plasticity level (where it goes beyond that point where it DOESN'T go back to its original form/shape), there you have the witness point and the angle will not make the string point off up into the air, and miss the fret's "taking off" point from where everything is calculated. You should do this at the bridge saddles too, on all strings, even the thin plain strings. To softly force a bend behind and immediately in front of the saddle, bridge nut. This is hard to do behind a zero fret though, but that's really why, it isn't needed.
I wonder if the tone consistency would be more pronounced on a bass? With a subwoofer capable of handling the low fundamental frequencies, I've usually heard a drop off when say the open low E is hit. It just doesn't resonate the lowest frequency of the note as well. Always thought a Zero Nut would likely fix that, but maybe just another type of nut material would do better than the cheap plastics and even Graphtec nuts I've used.
Hmmm I 'm not sure. Electric basses can be pretty tricky. You know how it goes... changing little stuff on a guitar isn't as much of a big deal but basses, to me anyway. We have had a few issues with stuff like dead spots and plinky sounding stings when the scale changes. Leo Fender was either really smart or just lucked out... maybe a little of each hahaha Thanks for watching CC
Nice video. Finally someone who waves the flag for zero frets. I think it exist more on basses these days than electric guitars, because - and this one is THE MOST important advantage of which you forgot to mention - of different string gauges used, as well as difference from flatwounds, roundwounds and so on. Bassists do vary their gauge way more than guitarists these days, with all their dropped D and BEAD tunings. Here's the top ten list of zero fret advantages. Listed by severity and in order. 1. You can use ANY heavy or thin gauge strings and stick them on there without having to re-file the nut, or change it out completely. And can go back to the gauge again, you were using before. The zero fret will always carry the same action/height above the first fret. This one is far better flag for it than any "same sound on open string as fretted ones" which is kind of moot, really. 2. The intonation on the first fret. Yes, the friction is less, on any steel fretwire since it's basically the same as what the strings are made of. You do not need additional 3rd party Earvana nuts, BFTS system, TrueTemperament frets for solving this. When you press down the first fret, the string doesn't bind inside the nut. The "nut" behind the zero fret are not in the way of wrong height or cut poorly, it's just a string guide, that doesn't play any role in friction or string action. I would say intonation IS better with ANY zero fret. Period. At least on the first few frets. 3. The "kink" or ping that you demonstrated with zero fret, if the strings have made a dent/groove in it. Well, as far as I've heard, it's nothing that are picked up by magnetic pickups anyway, the "ping" is heard or felt BEHIND your fingerpads, so that "kink" or "ping" is JUST heard acoustically. However, on any acoustic guitar, it may be much louder. Which comes to: 4. Alloy of all frets. Remember Rickenbacker when Rotosound strings came around in the 60s? Roundwound and ate Rickenbackers basses frets for breakfast due to the soft alloy used? Maybe those chinese cheapskate guitars were made of all soft alloys in all frets including zero fret, so therefore they were not popular. They wore down quickly. Now, Ric did NOT use zero frets, but the rest of the frets wore down just by finger pressure after a while, and had numerous return for warranty repair. Finally they changed out the alloy to a harder one. So, it's important too, what material/alloy the zero fret is made of. Stainless Steel should last quite a while. And not have that "kink" or ping when bending. I had that on my headless too, but I bent the strings so many times, so the grooves got "planed" out and eventually that kink/ping disappeared! Easy Fix! Now if a steel string can make grooves in a zero fret, think of how it chews in any kind of nut, made of bone, plastic, ivory, or anything else. I had nuts replaced or "re-grooved" every 3 years! 5. Easy to plane and level out, together with the other frets, once maintenance should be unavoidable. Which means you can have the zero fret at a lower action, actually, than on a regular nut, at least at the first few frets, because the vibration is more held within the string, when it oscillates, and thus, the "speaking" length at which the string starts to vibrate is lesser vibration oscillation. CAVEAT: this may be a liability on acoustic guitars, but not on electrics, since you can change pickup volume and pickup/string height too. If the string oscillates at a lesser amplitude near the end points, you can get away with lower action, and together with that goes better intonation. 6. Doesn't sink in, down into the fretboard or outside it, like any other nut does. Let me explain this: Take any guitar with a regular nut and tune - say - the open A string to a tee, with a super accurate strobe tuner. 0 cents dead on. Now, press down, say, the first fret on the G-string BUT DON'T PLAY IT. Instead, play that open A string again and watch the tuner....;-) ...went down a 2-3 cent flat didn't it? Now, please do this experiment with any zero fret, and come back here again with the results. Or you can just as well set a capo on the first fret, and do the same trick. Doesn't happen there. The nuts are more often than not, glued in with some flex still left in them and the extra amount of force from the pressed down string makes the nut move downwards EVER SO SLIGHTLY and cause other open strings to go a tiny tiny bit flat. If you cut the nut into 6 individual pieces for each string you might get rid of this, but it's easier to use just a zero fret. NOTE: The ZeroGlide still suffers from this problem since it resides on a nut actually. It moves! Hence all these snake-oil solutions to all this, Ervana nut, Buzz Feiten, and whatever... caveat: most Teles and Strats where the regular nut resides on the hard fretboard side (maple) are devoid of these issues too, so kudos to them. The hard maple under the nut keeps it from sinking down more from additional pressure. But nuts OUTSIDE the edge of the fretboard does this all of the time. Classical guitars with nylon strings are the worst. 7. Change them out. Well they last a lifetime, at least 3-4 times more than any nut (save for those brass nuts, or other metal nuts). Brian Mays guitar was from 1965, and sometime in the late 00s they found it necessary to change that zero fret out. Suck on that for a while. If they're made of SS, well then, it'll survive the guitar. 8. Don't need to care about the "guiding" nut behind it. The guiding nut can also provide some damping to the strings and that you don't need string trees. It depends on headstock angle though. But it can act as a "damping" finger so the strings doesn't buzz. Open ones that is. That one hardly needs to be changed out due to wear. 9. When checking relief with a ruler, you can get the exact "witness" point where the string takes off from the zero fret. It's harder to fit the ruler into the slots of any nut. Where you have to take into account each string individually. 10. Open string harmonics at above the 3-4th frets ping and ring out clearer and longer because it's "closer" to the metal witness point, and with a bone, or plastic, or other nut, they will sound duller, less sustain. So, more bell like chime. Probably will do this too with that new Gibson nut, or the old brass nuts too. Telecasters will benefit from this for sure. So while this is not a trait of zero fret only, as it can be with any other metal nut too, I listed this as the last one in the top list. Mind you that I never listed "same timbre as fretted and open strings" at all. That "advantage" is totally moot. Phew! That was something for you all to chew on!
I feel the zero fret on my acoustic makes strings much easier to bend especially at the closer frets like frets 1-5 bends .. i suppose because the tension is less ??? please advise
@@ukguitaryogi2888 Nothing to advise. Just put a capo on any "nut" guitar at the first fret, and voila you have that zero fret. It's even easier to press down. Don't require as much force. Which you seem to have discovered. All is about less friction.
I have a zero fret classical guitar that was given to me. The back on the guitar says "Germany East". It looks pretty old. Weird thing is there is no trus rod but has a narrow neck like a regular acoustic guitar but it's definitely a classical. Not sure about it. I heard it was made in Germany perhaps 1950-1980. It's missing a sadle and strings of course. I see remnants of someone maybe putting steel strings on it bc there is a small piece in the tuners. Any info would be great. It maybe a Frankenstein guitar but who knows lol
My '73 Deluxe Goldtop has a broken/repaired headstock and has relic marks because it is a relic and got marked. My '70's Strat sunburst got it's Demarzio super distortion replaced with a humbucker, but luckily it still has the brass nut.
Right on! You are an old school guy Randy. I love to see honest wear on old guitars... means they have been played hard and seen some combat. I am not a fan of phony aging but I guess it's popular and people think it looks... cool. Thanks for watching
Maybe they should just drag their new guitars behind their cars on the way home from Guitar Center or something. Bury them in a sandbox for a couple of days, or maybe a catbox. BB gun target practice.
What you guys are missing is most guitars coming out of these factories, play like shit because they do not cut the nut properly, the zere fret solves this, and like the Mosrite guitar the trem stays right in tune.
Matt I’m a huge Mosrite fan. I remember seeing the Ventures as a kid playing those and I was literally dumbstruck. The way they did the carve top. Those guitars r so iconic. Futuristic as hell in the 60s. I’ve played one but don’t own one. Absolutely brilliant guitar design.
Check out tymguitars in brisbane, Australia. His old workshop had about 30-40 mosrites and related copies hanging from the roof. He does great replicas of them every now and then.
I own a jazz guitar that my father bought in 1967, a Vox Typhoon, that happens to have a zero fret. This guitar has been played and still is, to a point that there are "scalloped" spots on the fretboard's rosewood and the frets present heavy traces of wearing. All the frets? No, the zero fret is almost perfect, no major dents, probably it will be the only fret that wouldn't need to be replaced when time comes. And that after 51 years of use. Thinking about the bad reputation of the zero fret, I came to think to something else; I've never understood one thing: how comes that the "christmas trees" on Fender's headstocks never have been considered cheap and/or ugly, and they are!, but the zero fret is. When you look at it the trees are the poorer solution to a badly engineered and cheaply made neck, and personally they are one of the several reasons why I will probably never buy a Strat.
With the zero fret you don't have issues with the string snagging in the nut or binding. Also corrects for improper break angle that many nuts cause. Also helps with intonation issues with the first fret.
I had about an hour long discussion with a customer about this on Saturday. He was under the impression only cheap guitars had zero frets so this video caught my attention when I was watching you trying to break a truss rod.
I have a 68 Kustom by Ross with a zero fret. Because it has sentimental value and after a number of levels and crowning over 50 years its time for refret. The pits in the zero fret is a small downside of zero fret...and stainless steel frets is a good option. Selecting the right fret wire will be the key.
I have a zero fret on my German-made Hofner, sometimes I find that capos simply don't work on that guitar on like the first 5 frets, I don't know if that has anything to do with the zero fret
No. You would have the same problem with a nut. What happens behind a capo or behind your barre finger is totally irrelevant once you fret up the fretboard. Your explanation is like ...what? Capo don't work? Can't you set it on any fret, does it fall off? Does it not fret properly? Mind you that if your capo is made for a certain radius fretboard, and your fretboard radius is totally off the one that capo has, it may press only at certain spots across the frets, and the strings in the middle will not be pressed down as much and will buzz. Especially if you have very low frets. If you have very tall frets, plus railroad track sized frets, the capo presses down the strings before they hit the bottom of the fretboard. I e there's air underneath the strings. Then all of them have been retuned, and sounds out of tune, because they don't have equal pressure, and take that one and add the radius curvature and you're in for problem. If you add tension to the capo to press them all the way down you lose tuning and intonation. You're pressing the strings too hard. Still, doesn't have anything to do with neither nut nor zero fret at all.
I have 3 guitars with zero frets. 1965 Gretsch Country Club, 1966 Mosrite Mark V, and circa 1969 Mosrite Avenger. I was curious the point of a zero fret. Thanks for the video.
Going back to Adrian leggs guitar book he would often speak about the zero fret on less expensive. Guitars being a correct building method .whether it was correct or not it fizzled out kinda like the ashtray covers the point was lost n both items and often forgot about . Good video bud . J
@@TexasToastGuitars Lieber used an adjustable nut thingy on his Butternut guitar. It looked relatively unobtrusive but historically I never liked roller or locking nuts. This looked like a better version of the deelybob on Micro-Frets guitars. Only a real nerd knows Micro-Frets! Lieber does beautiful work but since he started making Jerry Garcia replica guitars he's tapped a financial artery and his prices have shot up. More power to him I guess, but he wants six large for a Butternut now. The thing is, if I had it I'd pay it. Chris Stein was the rollout customer on these and he never plays his any more. I think he's getting to be in bad shape sadly and he, not D or Clem, will be the reason they eventually quit. The ergonomics are great, the design really cool, I love it. But I'd never take it out of the house.
Intonation is more consistent. I love the zero fret on my acoustic. I actually made one out of a bone nut and a piece of fret wire. Works fine. Also have the zero glide. I put a brass nut on a scalloped fingerboard I did.....a pain in the ass to set up but I like the way it rings the open strings. All the strings seem to ring differently.
@@TexasToastGuitars That's going to be interesting. Especially if you use one piece of long fretwire....you could intonate small pieces. Not sure how you can do it with one long piece other then angle it.. I would use stainless steel fretwire so it lasts.
I install a Zero fret on all my fretless CBGs (or does that make it the #1 fret?). 1/4-inch bolts are the trick. Built a fretted with a nut, and it was a pain in the butt to install. Gonna swap it for a zero fret.
@@spacejamgoliath I don't get the incentive behind this, that it should be cost saving in production. On the contrary. On a nut guitar, you only have to have the nut, on a zero fret guitar you still have to use the GUIDING nut behind it. More material involved. An extra fret PLUS the guiding nut. Beats me.
Just picked up a project from my local pawn shop for a screaming $27. Saw the bolt on for the Les and thought of an easy upgrade for a couple of reasons. Some of the inlay is missing, neck is a little rough overall and it has "an extra fret". Now that I did some quick reading figuring it is actually a zero fret and enjoyed your video (thanks guys) I might just work the original neck back into shape and keep the zero fret. Any recommendations fellas? All black Les w/ no logo on the head stock. Electronics really need upgrading I'm sure given it may be one of those "most shitty plastic nut mfers" mentioned below. LOL! Takes all kinds Texas Toast Guitars...
I have an early '80s Kramer Pacer with the Rockinger locking tremolo system they used for a very short time; it has a brass bar that functions as a zero fret which after over 35 years is badly grooved, so I can't bend strings without the "PING!" that drives me nuts. I want to replace it, but of course there are no replacement parts for a company long gone. I will say that pressing strings at the 1st fret is much easier on the Kramer than on my old Gibson Explorer E2.
OMG, i know this is 6 years old, but your opening statement had me spewing coffee all over desk !!! yes, all relic'ed Gibsons should have broken and repaired headstock
Awesome video, I've not seen this kind of discussion on the zero fret before to thank you for doing it. I can hear a difference in tone, for me it is most noticeable when you play the guitar unplugged. My daughter has a cheapo Rockburn S-style 1/2 size guitar and it has a zero fret. Out the box, the nut had been cut like a regular nut and the strings weren't resting on the zero fret at all so I had to fix that immediately. The intonation was as bad as you can imagine it would have been. The zero fret on that one is taller than the other frets but the action is still incredibly low. I wish more guitars had the option of zero frets, as I also wish more guitars came with steel fretwire and not softer nickel, makes no sense to me.
I have liked how they can sound and feel when I have a good set up. I can just clamp down and with less pressure and less attention to the pressure. Same with capo. Kind of a good guitar to record any type of players. With a nut, I have habits that compensate my string pressure by what I’m hearing. I think we all do as we get a feel for an instrument. It seems to me the most accomplished players intuitively find the sweet spot. So someday maybe I will too. Lol They are visualized when recording in frequency wave forms. You can see someone quickly lighten up or clamp down in the very beginning of chord changes and bring it into tune. Even varied by strings and fingers. You can see how well they are actually doing it. It actually sounds good and natural usually. But you hear it sounding noticeably out of tune for people all the time when they just clamp down. I usually ignore it unless it sounds shitty, but it’s there. Zero fret or a capo makes their playing sound better in a mix of other instruments in comparable frequencies. Lol But... I do hate that ping Chris kept doing and been pain in my ass to chase fret buzz sometimes. Needs a little higher maintenance to keep a tight set up. Shim the break angle a few times. So glad not set neck. I’m generally just careful with the one I play and try not to jinx it. Lol
I know I know... you’re like he got serious again... check out the big brain on j-mo... bounce boom call the cleaner. Lol I just write authoritatively. Throw any subject at me and I’ll throw it back sounding like I know what I’m talking about. And sometimes I even believe it myself. Lol
@@TexasToastGuitars Thanks so much for replying :) If it seems I'll have a fair amount of time before they wear, I can easily replace a zero fret quickly. Cheers :)
No, you will instead erode them and smooth them out. Lubricating them. Without changing height. Metal on metal do have less friction. SS fret are still very durable and will not wear. If you have stainless steel strings they will wear equally, but for the zero fret, a very long time, I think it would even survive the guitar.
I been owning BM guitar for about 4 years... it's zero fret now has two grooves under G and B strings making "ping" annoying noise when bend.. Should I take it to a Luther for a fret replacement ?.....any other solutions ? Cheers
Just to add two great guitar designs with zero frets. Gypsy jazz players love their Selmer guitars, they have zero frets, (I have one by Dupont). And then there's Brian May's Red Special, it has a zero fret as well as a very cool vibrato design.
@@plexibreath Selmer of course is a big band instrument company particularly noted for excellent saxophones and other woodwinds. They got into acoustic guitars by making a Mario Maccaferri design and as it happened the gypsy jazz guys liked them. Although maccaferri was a classical guitarist the guitars became associated with gypsy jazz. A Selmer sound was what Willie Nelson really wanted when he got that Martin classical and had the Prismatone pickup put on it. But he didn't know of the Selmers. They also made some guitar amps in the 60s that were a little weird like everything guitar in Europe. A friend of mine found a Selmer grenadilla clarinet in the dumpster of the local salvation army store. It had cracks throughout the both barrels and the case stunk like Courtney Love's, umm, socks. I took it and burned the case and took off the keys, they're part silver! The grenadilla wood will make some good nuts or acoustic saddles and the mouthpiece and ligature will also bring a few bucks on eBay, but mostly the wood is good for guitar purposes. It would also make some fingerboard inlay dots. He also bagged me a copy of "Hollywood Madam", a rare smutty paperback that brings fifty bucks on the used book lists. He snags stuff like this for me and I do a little work for him. I'm building him a tube guitar amp now, he doesn't know it yet. Of course if he reads this he will, but, he doesn't read too well anyway.
Thanks for watching Zoidberg, a regular nut that is done properly and a zero fret that is done properly should each be able to intonate the same... now, you can also say the same thing about either one done wrong. Where the zero fret really shines is when it is vs. a nut that has the slots too high (then you go out of tune when you fret the 1st) or even if the nut has a pinch point in it.
Yes. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Zero_Fret_Guitar_Intonation_jpg.jpg/701px-Zero_Fret_Guitar_Intonation_jpg.jpg upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Conventional_Nut_Guitar_Intonation.jpg/704px-Conventional_Nut_Guitar_Intonation.jpg If everything else is the same. Same nut height. The reason is the friction. Nothing else. The less friction, the less things are braking the string, or keeping it from being that flexible that it should be. Since you can get away with a lower action, with a zero fret, it works to an advantage regarding intonation anyway. Fringe benefit!
Vigier Guitars uses a zero fret that is a set of 6 needle bearings that allows each section to be replaced. It is really a fantastic system. Also Brian May's homemade guitar has a zero fret, he explained the advantages of it and personally I trust his word on it being a good idea, he is an astrophysicist so I tend to trust an actual genius.
I'll have to check those guitars out. As far as a zero fret being a good idea, you don't have to have all your braincells to know why it is a cool idea. I think Brian May is an inspirational guy too.
The guy that worked on May's guitar in 2005 said the zero fret was worn clean through! LOL! He said the other frets had never been changed but the zero fret was "shagged as hell"!
It seems to me that you would need more relief in the neck to avoid buzzing than you would on a regular nut. In our shop we do a lot of nut shimming/sanding to set the action to the customer's demand, as it's become more a subject of taste in recent years, especially with people refretting to or from jumbos. We do an (almost) level action from the 1st fret to whatever the foremost bridge-side fret is, with a standard for bow in the middle. I feel like this would lead to having an uneven action with very low string height towards the zero fret and higher action as you work your way upwards. Is that the case? This just seems less than ideal to me.
We set their action height to what they request within reason? I think it's wild I haven't set up (or even played) a single zero fret guitar in my days, I'm going to make it a point to try one out so I'm not as skeptical
Try to make this short & sweet, 1st acoustic I bought with some Christmas money, an Epiphone acoustic from the early mid 70s, had a broken nut, I was 13, offered the guy 50 bucks, got, not your top of the line guitar, Zero fret, bolt on neck, so it was my intro to fixing guitars.. forward 10yrs, loan it to a friend, well, ex friend, guitar gone, fast forward to today, walk in a pawn shop 2 months looking around, see an acoustic with a honey, amber top, I know it's from the 70s, look, it's an Epiphone like the one I use to own, for sentimental reasons I bought it, neck bowed, slight twist, 70 bucks, It's fixed, plays great, the only zero fret guitar I've ever had. Thanks for the video, I didn't realize how many guitars had the zero fret, at the time I didn't know the reasoning of it, hey I saw a Beatle playing an Epiphone, at 13 you'll try anything.
Thanks for watching James, glad you enjoyed the video. That is a cool story I'm glad you got your guitar back. The world is full of stories about the one that got away but every so often you hear about the one that got away and then you got it back again. Zero frets are a pretty slick solution to a tricky manufacturing problem. and has some real sonic properties too. Well, you know what I'm talking about.
Hi there a lot of talk here, but not much meat in the meal. I am going to put one in my $190 tele copy.will let you know how it goes. Cheers from Australia
I've got a couple of early 80's Gretsch Beasts with Dimarzio Super Distortion pickups. Zero fret and 24 other frets. They've both played like a dream. They should be more popular.
First off, that Ventures replica is superb and I'm very pleased to know someone makes one with a wider nut! LOL That sits at the top of my wish list, now. I think quite a few Gretsch guitars had zero frets, along with Mosrite and others. Stainless steel makes sense. Does Chris find they stay in tune better (Bigsby guitars)?
Hi Michael, we don't do too much with stainless frets right now but who knows? There are some advantages and while it is a paint to work with some of these advantages are a direct result of the hardness. It breaks as much as it cuts. Doing a video on it in the next few days. That import replica of the Mosrite trem is surprisingly good. Chris relaly likes it
Several buddies of mine tried stainless frets and gave up on the idea. I had a Carvin with them and enjoyed it, but it wasn't a game changer. I was thinking specifically about the zero nut with a Bigsby'd guitar. I had an early Gretsch Tennessean with a zero nut and thought it worked well on several things, intonation and I suspected tuning stability. This was in the '70s and long before locking tuners, which I'm about to try on my Epiphone WildKat. It has Filter Trons and is my "Gretsch-lite" for now. Chris' Mosrite is really superb and my favorite replica. I hope to expand my budget and find out! Do you all know Kit Simon? I used to play with him in Vail and have been friends for a long time.
That's pretty much where we are coming down on stainless fretwire for now as well. I'm not going to say it is just a fad but I also don't think that standard nickle frets are going anywhere anytime soon. I don't know Kit Simon
I like the zero glide nut. If you get wear in the zero fret you can replace the zero fret in 10 minutes. I actually made one using an evo fret too. Notched the nut in two places.....great to brighten tone and better intonation.] Got a brass nut on a strat.....it definately changes the sound. I'd rather use a zero glide if did it again. Zero glide needs to use stainless steel for zero fret but....
My first guitar was a yamaha like that one. But mine was an SG3, It had 3 pickups instead of 2, but otherwise it was a fantastic guitar. But it was the mid-eighties and I had to have humbuckers to rock. I so wish that I still had that one, but the ones I have seen are in the neighborhood of 2K, I let mine go for $125. Gotta go.... so depressed....
Hey, Matt. Hey Chris. I love how amused Chris is about your jokes. You keep looking over, maybe hoping for a smile, and Chris never disappoints... he never freaking dissapounts to look into the camera totally stone faced 😂. I wanna guitar with a negative 2 fret so I can play all those great notes available behind the nut that sound like freaking Ken dolls having their masculinity ripped off by Barbie. Anyway, I love zero frets. Brian May put one one, The Red Special, or at least my okd replica had one. The action was like margarine (much like butter, but so close, I can't believe it's not butter. Seriously, tho, the guutars I'm building all have a zero fret. That 2 so far, so be afraid Texas Toast, very afraid. I don't know, tho, Ned Steinberger has never had an original idea in his life (wink, wink. Nod of the head, if ta know what I mean) please read the paraenthized in a British accent with a big nose.Thx.
Beautiful Mosrite-like guitar. I had a wild idea recently. A Super Strat with a Mosrite body. You know, Floyd Rose, hockey stick headstock, single bridge humbucker... you get the idea. Maybe if find a bucket of money, I'll have you guys build one for me.
Thanks for watching twinsmm1, I would love to make that guitar because it would irritate Chris hahaha Actually, he would only bitch about it a little bit. We have a bunch more Toastrite projects that could very easily get 2x locking trems let me know if you want to do one and we'll work out payments. www.texastoastguitars.com/product-page/toastrite
The Zero Glide is very expensive for what it is, in fact rip off at £35, I bought one once and realised it was a waste of money. I make my own in 15 minuets, just cut the nut make 1/2 the width of the fret you intend to use. Then with a fret file make a cut between the nut and the zero point of the fingerboard. Job done.
My first zero-fret guitar was my Kramer Duke 6-string. Then each of my 5 Steinbergers had a 0-fret. What I end up doing to my 0-fret guitars is notching the zero-fret when I do fret levelings. That's because I don't want to remove the string retainers behind the zero-fret, because I'm a lazy old man.
Zero frets do make open strings sound less different than fretted ones but players LIKE the open string ring and that is why guitar rock music is usually in open string keys. Horn and piano music is in sharp and flat keys mostly. That’s how Keef figured out Chuck Berry didn’t write all those songs himself.
I guessing rock musicians love for open string keys.. (E,A,D,G) has as much to do with the reaction you get when you ask your rhythm guitarist to play the next one in A flat.
40 odd years ago, my brother had a Shergold guitar (a British guitar from the early 70's that also made guitars under the Hayman brand name) which had, as i recall a zero fret, with an unusually large gap between the "nut" and the fret. But, that guitar had an amazingly low and easy action to it. Hayman have recently made a comeback of sorts with a new design from Patrick Eggle, but, noticeably without the zero fret. So go figure!
Hi Tim, Thanks for watching. As cool as a zero fret can be I think the guitar buying public, in general, is not interested. In fact, I'd say that you will turn off potential buyers if you have a guitar with a zero fret. I know I don't guild zero fret necks unless I'm asked specifically to do so, It's too bad... because like you were saying the playability can be really great.
Certainly Gibson have stepped back on their attempts in 2015(?) to put those combination nut and zero fret thingies on their range. Bought a cheap Les Paul double cut with P90s on a year or so ago (too cheap to ignore) and, i have to say, i really like the guitar. Interestingly, as the original part was made from brass, and they had a number of complaints about them "notching" thy replaced them with a steel version. Have to say, i emailed Gibson Europe about the replacement and they just mailed me one. So good service as far as I am concerned.
Zero-frets were very commonly used by European guitar manufacturers from the 1950s through the 1970s. There was Shergold, plus a lot more: The Burns guitars for Hank Marvin, the Vox teardrop guitar that Brian Jones had - and of course, the Hofner basses played by Paul McCartney. That cultural fashion was also partly why Brian May's legendary homemade Red Special guitar has one. And those instruments are all great!
James Ormston Burns was a genius and had a hand in all of those names. Hayman was the one that had a round clear disk thingy in the headstock as I recall. Shergold was famous for a modulkar doubleneck they did for someone, maybe Mike Rutherford, and a six string bass some guy in a punk band had oneitis for and used exclusively, Eastwood has a copy in its oeuvre. But most of those guitars as cool as they looked were clunky in actual practice.
Most of my guitars have them now, because of zero glide. Tuning stability and action are both better, nuff said. I don't believe there is any compromise of tone.
Hang on folks, there's a new one the Zero Glide Nut:goldtonemusicgroup.com/zeroglide/ which is the Zero fret attached to the Nut. With this Gizmo the intonation on any stringed instrument stays put, better action, better tone, & this one almost never wears out because it's made out of a Stronger Stainless steel.
@@TexasToastGuitars They're also working on Zero Glide nuts for Bowed instruments that are curved to follow the Curved Fingerboard (or Fret board if it's a fretted Violin).
@@TexasToastGuitars Some fretless Basses have a Zero fret near the nut to reduce the string contact in the nut by a big amount & to make the open string sound like the fretted string, the fingerboard is now made out of Metal & the guide lines are silk screened. The only other fretless instruments that sadly don't have a Zero Glide nut are Orchestral Bowed instruments.
I built a fretless bass years ago with a zero fret and told my friends it was a zero fret fretless bass with one fret. The look on their faces was worth the price of admission. ;)
HAHAHA I like your style brotherman
This made the internet for me today, thanks! :)
Say WHAT?⁉️😆
I installed a zero fret onto one of my guitars recently (even did a video on the process, it wasn't a zero glide, just a cheap steel fret and I modified the existing nut to fit it...) and it's been working wonders ! my intonation is perfect now, the guitar feels great to play, and the sound on the open stings is noticeably better !
10/10 would recommend
I have heard about that modification but never tried it sounds like you are good to go my friend
I have a 1965 EKO Italian Silvertone flatop that has a bolt on neck and zero fret. Thing plays like no other guitar in my fleet. Love it.
My Gretsch 6120-1960 had a zero fret and I absolutely loved it! You honestly could really tell a difference when setting it up and getting the action dialed in.
It's the good stuff kids go for
I used a zero fret when I made my electric 12 string. Being able to get the action super low makes a massive difference to playability on a 12.
Me too, the first 12 string I made in 1989 had a zero fret too
I have a Mosrite copy made by a luthier with the zero fret and it plays like butter !
It's my only guitar with this feature and I just love its timbre.
Put a capo on the second fret (in between one and two) of your guitar. Tune your guitar to F#-B-E-A-C#-F# (One step up) with a digital tuner. Now take off the capo and check the tuning with your digital tuner. Most guitars will be out of tune. Now you see why the "Zero Fret" is the best thing you can have on a guitar. Not to forget how much better the action is on a Zero Fret guitar. This is why alot of folk guitarist play with the capo on the second Fret.
Good for you guys! I've really come round to zero frets. I've encountered one on an old Japanese Archtop I restored this year, a Teisco from the 60s that I worked on last year (I did the refret of that one in stainless) and on a Strandberg, which is about as contemporary as guitar design gets (stainless again). All of 'em work just fine. The Strandberg one was a higher fret that needed lowering, but it was an easy job. Basically, I cut in slots with fret files to get the action a hair above where the owner wanted it, then sanded the zero fret down until the divots were gone and crowned and polished, after which it was perfect.
Right on TomboLP those old guitars are sure a lot of fun to work on and play. Thanks for watching
I too have suffered the stigma of being a "Zero fretter". But now, with professional help I am coming to terms with the ignominy. People in the street no longer bother me, but the hurtful words from my family were a knife to my soul. Currently in a 12 step programme to rid me of this invidious curse. Pray for me please.
Admitting you have a problem is the first step on your road to recovery
I install a Zero Glide nut system from Gold Tone in all my setups. It combines the Zero Fret with the nut and it works. Zero Glide now has a stainless steel zero fret option. The action at the first fret, if you use the proper size fret of the 4 provided in the kit, will give you perfect action at the first fret. No string slot files are required unless you purchase the unslotted version. I have installed these on acoustic guitars, Dobros, mandolins and Teles. Its my choice for a nut. I tried brass but it is a pain to cut the slots. I like the Zero Glide for ease of install and what it does for my instruments, Thank you Texas Toast Guitars for bringing this up. You guys ROCK!!!
I hear great things about that system
Zero Glide zero frets wear out in a week! Even the stainless steel ones. Much to my dismay because they really set a great low action! Kiesel used ss zero frets on their early Vaders but quit using them because of wearing grooves quickly. They even offered to change it to a regular nut for free!
I have a 1959 Gibson C-1 classical guitar with a zero fret, it was factory installed, and it plays really well. Now I’m thinking about putting one, a Sintoms stainless steel fret, on my Tele. It’s for me a better option than trying to cut a bone or Tusq nut, which is difficult to do if you don’t do it very much. Good video guys.
My fret less bass has a zero fret
HAHAHA
I have installed 2 "Zero Glide" nut replacements on my Sterling guitars that have trem units and it definitely has more sustain, it's a little brighter in tone and it stays in tune very well. I'm a believer!
I'll have to give one of those a try some time. They seem like a neat way to change up an existing guitar and give some cool sonic properties
@@TexasToastGuitars They actually have a stainless steel zero fret now. The nickle silver does wear and it's doesn't take long to get a slot worn in it. It's fine as long as it's high enough off the 1st fret as it wears. I like the zero glide. It helps intonation and rings brightly. It makes more sense to use the stainless zero fret. It won't wear quickly.
@@cugir321 exactly the same experience for me. Installed a ZeroGlide on a partscaster and it quickly developed grooves. Replaced it with their stainless steel version and the problem was solved instantly. Colour me impressed…!!
@@80Days Stainless fret wire is the way to go with zero glide....no doubt. Don't waste your time with the nickle stuff. Even though it does work......I've had one on for 4 or 5 years but has grooves.
Roger Bucknall of Fylde guitars, England has been making high end handmade acoustic guitars with zero frets since the 1970s and has talked at length about the advantages in terms of tone and action. He also reports that a properly made string guide for a zero fret is as exactling as cutting a bone nut (i.e. it must be the right depth, width and camber, as well as being the right distance from the zero fret). He does not use stainless steel zero frets and has not experienced the ding problem described here. I believe he attributes this to correct cutting of the guide, since this leads to no greater pressure than at other frets (in fact, it is likely that other frets will get more wear, since they experience more impact. Also, as you guys suggest, there's no real reason for having a high zero fret (unless you want a high action at fret 1 for some reason). After all, we don't have fret 1 higher than fret 2, fret 2 higher than fret 3, and so on and on. That sort of buzz problem is sorted by relief.
Huh? Really? The string is always in contact with the zero fret and it will wear grooves WAY before the other frets! It's a great idea if they could come up with a fret material that doesn't wear grooves in a week!
My 1998 Vigier Excalibur has a zero fret and bearing fulcrums on the Floyd Rose style locking tremolo bridge and nut. It is the fastest, most stable guitar I've ever played or owned, bar none. It stays in tune forever, even through the most radical dive bombs and pull ups on the tremolo bar and sustains for days. I will never sell it, and it's become the only electric guitar I play. Oh, also it doesn't have a truss rod system either, instead it has a carbon fiber insert the entire length of the neck, and I never have to set the relief because of temperature and humidity swings. Okay, I've bragged enough on my guitar.
That is awesome man
@@TexasToastGuitars yes,it is!
The guys can't seem to appreciate the different, brighter sound created by a metal string resting against a metal fret vs a plastic or bone nut. But this is much more obvious on an acoustic guitar. If you have any doubts about that then you've never used a capo on an acoustic guitar. The biggest difference I've noticed, besides the brighter sound, is the low string action on the first fret. Sure, a person can file down a plastic nut so that the strings are at the same height as a hypothetical zero fret, but after just a little wear on the nut the strings will start to buzz. The ping demonstrated can be a problem but not as likely with the zero glide zero fret since the fret and the nut are one unit, therefore very close together. That makes it almost impossible to move the string horizontal to the zero fret. Lower string action on the first through fifth fret results in much improved intonation. see these charts at.. goldtonemusicgroup.com/zeroglide/ Obviously I'm sold and loving it. If you're still worried and zero fret wear, go with stainless steel.
Good advice for sure... we will check it out
Im having a very amazing custom headless being built that will have evo gold frets and a Zero fret. I had no idea until I started watching videos that it really makes perfect sense.
Cool ma, thanks for watching
IMHO the MTM nut design from Strandberg is probably the most well engineered; each string has its own independent hardened steel nut groove piece, and the action can be easily adjusted and locked into position with a set screw.
Nick K the wound bass strings of the set, especially in 7,8 strings, will have the core of the string slip out of the winding with those designs. Almost everyone's headless guitars have that now. Michael Sankey has designed a locking system that involves a screw and he free sources the idea so that someone will improve further. The strings get threaded through a block at the necks end party the nut and the tuners are behind the bridge. The screw doesn't press down on the strings only. It presses them down and screws them into the tuner via the thread wall so you have torque and pressure holding them in place
i was fretting a 24 fret guitar neck and after
i got down to the 23 fret I look around and boom I had zero frets lol
Ha, you put one in the zero location and ran out when you got to 24 or you only made a 23 fret neck?
Either way we all have a story like that amigo.
Ideally, the zero-fret itself should not be the exact same size of wire as the regular frets. It should be slightly taller, the same as how conventional nuts do place the string up a bit from the first fret.
@@erickleefeld4883
No. It should be the same and treated like every other fret.
Brian May' s Red Special features a zero fret. Nuff said. It uses a slight string angle over the zero fret, straight string pull and locking tuners and gets great tuning stability with the vibrato bar. This is something you guys missed; a zero fret and straight string path means low friction with no sharp angles for the strings to bind up on.
All good points Christian, thanks for watching
Hi Christian, I own BM Red Special.. love it, but its zero fret developed a couple of grooves under g and b string causing annoying ping noise when bend..do you know any good solutions to fix this ? Cheers
A Zero Fret is ideal for 12 String Guitars because you want the action to be easy on the fretting hand.
I like this video. Do you have any comments on the washburn Buzz Feten system?
I have a 1965 Framus Star Bass 5/150/ often refereed to as the Stones Bass, it came with a zero fret. To me a nut doesn't make sense, what happens when you change sting gauge.
I think the zero fret got a bad rap for sure
I needed a new nut on my Strat, after years of abuse from experimenting with different string gauges. I had a Zero-Glide kit put in - and I love it!
The open and fretted strings all sound the same, and the action at the first several frets feels consistent across all the strings, because the heights of the strings at the zero-fret is exactly the same.
Yeah, a lot of cheap guitars in the 1950s and 1960s had zero-frets. But you can get cheap guitars today with lousy regular nuts, too! There are good products and bad products, good workmanship and bad workmanship.
You got that right Eric, glad to hear you are digging the Zero-Glide. I have never tried one but they seem pretty neat.
I have other guitars with zero-frets, including a 1979(?) aluminum neck Kramer bass. One of the great advantages is how the action at the nut area is perfectly consistent across all the strings, instead of the slight imperfections and variations you'll get with conventional nuts. It all just feels right.
do you think that stainless zero fret could change the tone of open strings if the rest of frets are nickel ones?
It will if you use 430 grade stainless... it is a ferritic stainless steel, offering standard corrosion resistance. It is often used only in decorative applications.
I feel the zero fret on my acoustic makes strings much easier to bend especially at the closer frets like frets 1-5 bends .. i suppose because the tension is less ??? please advise
I think you are right
@@TexasToastGuitars
I put steel frets on a old eko acoustic with a zero fret- medium 13 to 56 strings and a decent setup and dam I can bend those lower frets strings surpisingly easy....
more easy than a vintage tokai strat with 7.25 radius and a bone nut and 10- 46 strings !
I suppose I use the strat 7.25 mainly for chordal stuff any how. seems interesting though as I was expecting super easy string bending all over the neck !
It's the friction. And as such the tension is slightly more closest to the nut. When you press metal inside a bone, plastic, or whatever nut, the string frictions against both the walls surrounding the string and the bottom. On a zero fret the strings bottom is the only thing that slides very easily over the zero fret, since it is metal agains metal, slightl more slippery. And if you have stainless steel, even less friction.
Loved the Brass nut I fitted to my Strat. My local luthier cut a brass blank to me and it was great.
Cool man
In the 70's I was playing a Guild S-100 (stock) and a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe that I bought new from the Music Store where I gave lessons. I traded the Les Paul for a couple of other guitars (Guild S-300 D & S-300 AD) and an original Mesa Boogie combo. it was worth it. I still have the S-300 AD but play Music Man Silhouettes now.
Music Man makes one hell of a guitar, that's for sure. I would be happy to cover it in paisley for you :)
I've seen some more and where it's really helpful are 12-string guitars. Intonation is just spot on, saves a lot of the work making a 12-string nut. Again, should be stainless steel since you have even more tension on that zerofret. If it's not too round and it's mirror polished, chances of getting divots are minimized.
You got that right. 12 stings are a lot easier with a zero-fret.
@Leon thecat
Only harder is not what you're looking for. The company with the Big G once had lots of new fretwire made, being proud how hard it was. They didn't listen and with a certain degree of hardness it wears differently, it gets brittle and it wastes away quicker than more ductile alloys. The stainless steel alloy could be much harder, but it's a goo compromise to form it and work with it and getting long lasting frets too. Balance is the key or else you sit on tons of fretwire that you can't use in your factory.
The plastic nut on my guitar cracked and broke. I glued it with super glue, filed it with a jewelers file to the radius of the neck, with a slight curve to compensate for intonation. Dropped in a “zero fret” made from a new stainless steel 20” bicycle spoke. Perfect! It’s a compensated zero fret! Intonation is now perfect, and the tone is great! $1.00 invested.
I've never had a zero fret guitar, some interesting pros and cons! Cool shop, thanks!
Thanks for watching Tod, glad to hear you are enjoying the videos
At 4:38 you guys talk about open and fretted strings sounding the same, what do you mean by that???
The idea is that a fretted string stops on metal and the unfretted string would stop on bone or plastic... usually . Of course lots of other materials could be used for a nut but you know what I'm talking about
Ahhh! Thank you for clarifying that!
My very first guitar had a zero fret. It was a Framus Strato 6 that my parents bought for me new in the mid 1970s -- I think in 75. It taught me a lot about guitar, including much of the negative side ... but I guess I'm just a guitar-playing masochist, because I still play without making a dime!😎 Anyway, I owe you guys thanks because you explained something about that first guitar that I hated and thought I caused -- that string jumping you mentioned. My 5th string used to do that all the time; I just learned to pop it back really quickly. I learned a LOT of fault management skills back then, because otherwise I couldn't play at all! I lost that guitar many years ago and I often wish I had it back so as to find out what I could do with it now that I have so many more tools and so much more knowledge than I had then!
Depending on string gauge and tuning I sometimes find it necessary to cut nut slots slightly higher on lower strings which you can't do on a zero fret. Also, depending on break angle, heavier gauge strings can ride off the back edge of the zero fret, exaggerating action at that point and possibly affecting intonation. Just a couple considerations.
Thanks for watching NoStNick, good points and things to consider when using the zero fret.
You should press with your finger right behind the witness point and in front of it, then the thick gauge string will go beyond it's elasticity level (where it goes back to original shape and form once released) and get into the plasticity level (where it goes beyond that point where it DOESN'T go back to its original form/shape), there you have the witness point and the angle will not make the string point off up into the air, and miss the fret's "taking off" point from where everything is calculated. You should do this at the bridge saddles too, on all strings, even the thin plain strings. To softly force a bend behind and immediately in front of the saddle, bridge nut. This is hard to do behind a zero fret though, but that's really why, it isn't needed.
I wonder if the tone consistency would be more pronounced on a bass? With a subwoofer capable of handling the low fundamental frequencies, I've usually heard a drop off when say the open low E is hit. It just doesn't resonate the lowest frequency of the note as well.
Always thought a Zero Nut would likely fix that, but maybe just another type of nut material would do better than the cheap plastics and even Graphtec nuts I've used.
Hmmm I 'm not sure. Electric basses can be pretty tricky. You know how it goes... changing little stuff on a guitar isn't as much of a big deal but basses, to me anyway. We have had a few issues with stuff like dead spots and plinky sounding stings when the scale changes. Leo Fender was either really smart or just lucked out... maybe a little of each hahaha
Thanks for watching CC
I was thinking g the same thing,stainless ,my schector bass has stainless frets
It would certainly wear less than standard nickel frets. I don't use stainless frets in my shop but I know they are very popular these days.
Does anybody know what the guitar on the right with the black headstock is please
Yamaha SG
@@TexasToastGuitars Thanks :) is it a special edition and year?
@@CaratacusAD 1966 standard edition
Nice video. Finally someone who waves the flag for zero frets. I think it exist more on basses these days than electric guitars, because - and this one is THE MOST important advantage of which you forgot to mention - of different string gauges used, as well as difference from flatwounds, roundwounds and so on. Bassists do vary their gauge way more than guitarists these days, with all their dropped D and BEAD tunings. Here's the top ten list of zero fret advantages. Listed by severity and in order.
1. You can use ANY heavy or thin gauge strings and stick them on there without having to re-file the nut, or change it out completely. And can go back to the gauge again, you were using before. The zero fret will always carry the same action/height above the first fret. This one is far better flag for it than any "same sound on open string as fretted ones" which is kind of moot, really.
2. The intonation on the first fret. Yes, the friction is less, on any steel fretwire since it's basically the same as what the strings are made of. You do not need additional 3rd party Earvana nuts, BFTS system, TrueTemperament frets for solving this. When you press down the first fret, the string doesn't bind inside the nut. The "nut" behind the zero fret are not in the way of wrong height or cut poorly, it's just a string guide, that doesn't play any role in friction or string action. I would say intonation IS better with ANY zero fret. Period. At least on the first few frets.
3. The "kink" or ping that you demonstrated with zero fret, if the strings have made a dent/groove in it. Well, as far as I've heard, it's nothing that are picked up by magnetic pickups anyway, the "ping" is heard or felt BEHIND your fingerpads, so that "kink" or "ping" is JUST heard acoustically. However, on any acoustic guitar, it may be much louder. Which comes to:
4. Alloy of all frets. Remember Rickenbacker when Rotosound strings came around in the 60s? Roundwound and ate Rickenbackers basses frets for breakfast due to the soft alloy used? Maybe those chinese cheapskate guitars were made of all soft alloys in all frets including zero fret, so therefore they were not popular. They wore down quickly. Now, Ric did NOT use zero frets, but the rest of the frets wore down just by finger pressure after a while, and had numerous return for warranty repair. Finally they changed out the alloy to a harder one. So, it's important too, what material/alloy the zero fret is made of. Stainless Steel should last quite a while. And not have that "kink" or ping when bending. I had that on my headless too, but I bent the strings so many times, so the grooves got "planed" out and eventually that kink/ping disappeared! Easy Fix! Now if a steel string can make grooves in a zero fret, think of how it chews in any kind of nut, made of bone, plastic, ivory, or anything else. I had nuts replaced or "re-grooved" every 3 years!
5. Easy to plane and level out, together with the other frets, once maintenance should be unavoidable. Which means you can have the zero fret at a lower action, actually, than on a regular nut, at least at the first few frets, because the vibration is more held within the string, when it oscillates, and thus, the "speaking" length at which the string starts to vibrate is lesser vibration oscillation. CAVEAT: this may be a liability on acoustic guitars, but not on electrics, since you can change pickup volume and pickup/string height too. If the string oscillates at a lesser amplitude near the end points, you can get away with lower action, and together with that goes better intonation.
6. Doesn't sink in, down into the fretboard or outside it, like any other nut does. Let me explain this: Take any guitar with a regular nut and tune - say - the open A string to a tee, with a super accurate strobe tuner. 0 cents dead on. Now, press down, say, the first fret on the G-string BUT DON'T PLAY IT. Instead, play that open A string again and watch the tuner....;-) ...went down a 2-3 cent flat didn't it? Now, please do this experiment with any zero fret, and come back here again with the results. Or you can just as well set a capo on the first fret, and do the same trick. Doesn't happen there. The nuts are more often than not, glued in with some flex still left in them and the extra amount of force from the pressed down string makes the nut move downwards EVER SO SLIGHTLY and cause other open strings to go a tiny tiny bit flat. If you cut the nut into 6 individual pieces for each string you might get rid of this, but it's easier to use just a zero fret.
NOTE: The ZeroGlide still suffers from this problem since it resides on a nut actually. It moves! Hence all these snake-oil solutions to all this, Ervana nut, Buzz Feiten, and whatever... caveat: most Teles and Strats where the regular nut resides on the hard fretboard side (maple) are devoid of these issues too, so kudos to them. The hard maple under the nut keeps it from sinking down more from additional pressure. But nuts OUTSIDE the edge of the fretboard does this all of the time. Classical guitars with nylon strings are the worst.
7. Change them out. Well they last a lifetime, at least 3-4 times more than any nut (save for those brass nuts, or other metal nuts). Brian Mays guitar was from 1965, and sometime in the late 00s they found it necessary to change that zero fret out. Suck on that for a while. If they're made of SS, well then, it'll survive the guitar.
8. Don't need to care about the "guiding" nut behind it. The guiding nut can also provide some damping to the strings and that you don't need string trees. It depends on headstock angle though. But it can act as a "damping" finger so the strings doesn't buzz. Open ones that is. That one hardly needs to be changed out due to wear.
9. When checking relief with a ruler, you can get the exact "witness" point where the string takes off from the zero fret. It's harder to fit the ruler into the slots of any nut. Where you have to take into account each string individually.
10. Open string harmonics at above the 3-4th frets ping and ring out clearer and longer because it's "closer" to the metal witness point, and with a bone, or plastic, or other nut, they will sound duller, less sustain. So, more bell like chime. Probably will do this too with that new Gibson nut, or the old brass nuts too. Telecasters will benefit from this for sure. So while this is not a trait of zero fret only, as it can be with any other metal nut too, I listed this as the last one in the top list.
Mind you that I never listed "same timbre as fretted and open strings" at all. That "advantage" is totally moot.
Phew! That was something for you all to chew on!
You make a lot of really great points here. Thanks for chiming in
I feel the zero fret on my acoustic makes strings much easier to bend especially at the closer frets like frets 1-5 bends .. i suppose because the tension is less ??? please advise
@@ukguitaryogi2888 Nothing to advise. Just put a capo on any "nut" guitar at the first fret, and voila you have that zero fret. It's even easier to press down. Don't require as much force. Which you seem to have discovered. All is about less friction.
I have a zero fret classical guitar that was given to me. The back on the guitar says "Germany East". It looks pretty old. Weird thing is there is no trus rod but has a narrow neck like a regular acoustic guitar but it's definitely a classical. Not sure about it. I heard it was made in Germany perhaps 1950-1980. It's missing a sadle and strings of course. I see remnants of someone maybe putting steel strings on it bc there is a small piece in the tuners. Any info would be great. It maybe a Frankenstein guitar but who knows lol
I love classical guitars
@@TexasToastGuitars Me too!
My '73 Deluxe Goldtop has a broken/repaired headstock and has relic marks because it is a relic and got marked. My '70's Strat sunburst got it's Demarzio super distortion replaced with a humbucker, but luckily it still has the brass nut.
Right on! You are an old school guy Randy. I love to see honest wear on old guitars... means they have been played hard and seen some combat.
I am not a fan of phony aging but I guess it's popular and people think it looks... cool.
Thanks for watching
Maybe they should just drag their new guitars behind their cars on the way home from Guitar Center or something. Bury them in a sandbox for a couple of days, or maybe a catbox. BB gun target practice.
I'll see if I can convince the guys at the Fender Custom Shop when we are at NAMM hahaha
I installed ZeroGlides on all my guitars years ago and make my own brass string guides. Even done on my Rickenbacker 12-strings.
Started my support through Patreon. Keep up the great work.
Thank you so much Jack, glad to have you along for the ride.
What you guys are missing is most guitars coming out of these factories, play like shit because they do not cut the nut properly, the zere fret solves this, and like the Mosrite guitar the trem stays right in tune.
Also with bridges made with graph tech plastic , the zero fret unites all the strings so you only have to earth one of them to get them all
I'm glad people dig the zero fret
Matt I’m a huge Mosrite fan. I remember seeing the Ventures as a kid playing those and I was literally dumbstruck. The way they did the carve top. Those guitars r so iconic. Futuristic as hell in the 60s. I’ve played one but don’t own one. Absolutely brilliant guitar design.
Totally cool guitars for sure. We have half a dozen or more to finish up, Ian is working on them as time allows.
Check out tymguitars in brisbane, Australia. His old workshop had about 30-40 mosrites and related copies hanging from the roof.
He does great replicas of them every now and then.
I own a jazz guitar that my father bought in 1967, a Vox Typhoon, that happens to have a zero fret. This guitar has been played and still is, to a point that there are "scalloped" spots on the fretboard's rosewood and the frets present heavy traces of wearing. All the frets? No, the zero fret is almost perfect, no major dents, probably it will be the only fret that wouldn't need to be replaced when time comes. And that after 51 years of use.
Thinking about the bad reputation of the zero fret, I came to think to something else; I've never understood one thing: how comes that the "christmas trees" on Fender's headstocks never have been considered cheap and/or ugly, and they are!, but the zero fret is. When you look at it the trees are the poorer solution to a badly engineered and cheaply made neck, and personally they are one of the several reasons why I will probably never buy a Strat.
Thanks for watching ginnapple. Glad to hear you still have your father's guitar and that it is in good shape. Have a great week
Stew Mac markets the zero glide fret and I installed one on my Strat. Now I have to adjust the action.
I have heard good things about those but not actually tried one
With the zero fret you don't have issues with the string snagging in the nut or binding. Also corrects for improper break angle that many nuts cause. Also helps with intonation issues with the first fret.
Sho you right Keith. I meant to say that in the video but I spaced it out.
I had about an hour long discussion with a customer about this on Saturday. He was under the impression only cheap guitars had zero frets so this video caught my attention when I was watching you trying to break a truss rod.
The bane of the zero fret is the "cheap guitar" label.
I have a 68 Kustom by Ross with a zero fret. Because it has sentimental value and after a number of levels and crowning over 50 years its time for refret. The pits in the zero fret is a small downside of zero fret...and stainless steel frets is a good option. Selecting the right fret wire will be the key.
Cool guitar Kevin
I have a zero fret on my German-made Hofner, sometimes I find that capos simply don't work on that guitar on like the first 5 frets, I don't know if that has anything to do with the zero fret
That's a new one for me
Is it a Colorama? Or a 173? No wait hofners 173 didn't have zero frets
No. You would have the same problem with a nut. What happens behind a capo or behind your barre finger is totally irrelevant once you fret up the fretboard. Your explanation is like ...what? Capo don't work? Can't you set it on any fret, does it fall off? Does it not fret properly? Mind you that if your capo is made for a certain radius fretboard, and your fretboard radius is totally off the one that capo has, it may press only at certain spots across the frets, and the strings in the middle will not be pressed down as much and will buzz. Especially if you have very low frets.
If you have very tall frets, plus railroad track sized frets, the capo presses down the strings before they hit the bottom of the fretboard. I e there's air underneath the strings. Then all of them have been retuned, and sounds out of tune, because they don't have equal pressure, and take that one and add the radius curvature and you're in for problem. If you add tension to the capo to press them all the way down you lose tuning and intonation. You're pressing the strings too hard. Still, doesn't have anything to do with neither nut nor zero fret at all.
I have a Parker acoustic with a zero fret, it plays very nice, great action, like an electric.
That's cool man
Zero frets are a must! I love them. Great video.
Thanks botherman, we like them too
Do they last longer than a week before getting buzzing from divots?
Omg lol. At 2 minutes in that dangle sound reminds me of that sound a Hyundai makes indicating your keys are in the ignition
Is that Mosrite copy for sale? if so how much?
$2500
Great video!
Thanks Tom
Chris, is that a Yamaha SG-2? Link Wray used to play one of those, a red one.
Link Wray, such a monster man
I have 3 guitars with zero frets. 1965 Gretsch Country Club, 1966 Mosrite Mark V, and circa 1969 Mosrite Avenger. I was curious the point of a zero fret. Thanks for the video.
Thanks for watching James, sounds like you got some really cool old guitars there. Glad you enjoyed the video
James, are you a member at any Mosrite Facebook Page?
@@101Volts I am but I joined way after I posted my OP 3 years ago.
I had one guitar with a zero fret nut and loved it. Always wondered why they weren't more popular.
They are cool man
Does the zero fret increase sustain? In theory it should.
What type of guitar is that in the left?
That is one we built
Going back to Adrian leggs guitar book he would often speak about the zero fret on less expensive. Guitars being a correct building method .whether it was correct or not it fizzled out kinda like the ashtray covers the point was lost n both items and often forgot about . Good video bud . J
Thanks for watching, as always, I think the zero fret gets a bad rap but it works great if you do it right. Of course, so does a regular nut hahaha
@@TexasToastGuitars Lieber used an adjustable nut thingy on his Butternut guitar. It looked relatively unobtrusive but historically I never liked roller or locking nuts. This looked like a better version of the deelybob on Micro-Frets guitars. Only a real nerd knows Micro-Frets!
Lieber does beautiful work but since he started making Jerry Garcia replica guitars he's tapped a financial artery and his prices have shot up. More power to him I guess, but he wants six large for a Butternut now. The thing is, if I had it I'd pay it. Chris Stein was the rollout customer on these and he never plays his any more. I think he's getting to be in bad shape sadly and he, not D or Clem, will be the reason they eventually quit.
The ergonomics are great, the design really cool, I love it. But I'd never take it out of the house.
Intonation is more consistent. I love the zero fret on my acoustic. I actually made one out of a bone nut and a piece of fret wire. Works fine. Also have the zero glide. I put a brass nut on a scalloped fingerboard I did.....a pain in the ass to set up but I like the way it rings the open strings. All the strings seem to ring differently.
I am building an acoustic bridge right now with a fretwire saddle I'll keep you posted
@@TexasToastGuitars That's going to be interesting. Especially if you use one piece of long fretwire....you could intonate small pieces. Not sure how you can do it with one long piece other then angle it.. I would use stainless steel fretwire so it lasts.
I install a Zero fret on all my fretless CBGs (or does that make it the #1 fret?). 1/4-inch bolts are the trick.
Built a fretted with a nut, and it was a pain in the butt to install. Gonna swap it for a zero fret.
I like the idea of a 1 fret bass hahaha
This is why cheap guitars often have zero fret. It is easier to get right than just a nut
@@spacejamgoliath I don't get the incentive behind this, that it should be cost saving in production. On the contrary. On a nut guitar, you only have to have the nut, on a zero fret guitar you still have to use the GUIDING nut behind it. More material involved. An extra fret PLUS the guiding nut. Beats me.
Just picked up a project from my local pawn shop for a screaming $27. Saw the bolt on for the Les and thought of an easy upgrade for a couple of reasons. Some of the inlay is missing, neck is a little rough overall and it has "an extra fret". Now that I did some quick reading figuring it is actually a zero fret and enjoyed your video (thanks guys) I might just work the original neck back into shape and keep the zero fret. Any recommendations fellas? All black Les w/ no logo on the head stock. Electronics really need upgrading I'm sure given it may be one of those "most shitty plastic nut mfers" mentioned below. LOL! Takes all kinds Texas Toast Guitars...
Thanks for watching John, you should keep the zero fret that way things will work like the manufacturer intended.
How is string bending with zero fret any changes + or - better or worse........
I think it's the same thing... I don't know why it would be any different
I have an early '80s Kramer Pacer with the Rockinger locking tremolo system they used for a very short time; it has a brass bar that functions as a zero fret which after over 35 years is badly grooved, so I can't bend strings without the "PING!" that drives me nuts. I want to replace it, but of course there are no replacement parts for a company long gone.
I will say that pressing strings at the 1st fret is much easier on the Kramer than on my old Gibson Explorer E2.
Oh man, that is a bummer.
@@TexasToastGuitars Yes. Yes it is...lol
OMG, i know this is 6 years old, but your opening statement had me spewing coffee all over desk !!! yes, all relic'ed Gibsons should have broken and repaired headstock
Hahaha I still think they should my friend
Awesome video, I've not seen this kind of discussion on the zero fret before to thank you for doing it. I can hear a difference in tone, for me it is most noticeable when you play the guitar unplugged. My daughter has a cheapo Rockburn S-style 1/2 size guitar and it has a zero fret. Out the box, the nut had been cut like a regular nut and the strings weren't resting on the zero fret at all so I had to fix that immediately. The intonation was as bad as you can imagine it would have been. The zero fret on that one is taller than the other frets but the action is still incredibly low. I wish more guitars had the option of zero frets, as I also wish more guitars came with steel fretwire and not softer nickel, makes no sense to me.
Thanks for watching Fenrir, the zero fret is often misunderstood. I like them and think if more people gave them a chance they would too.
I have liked how they can sound and feel when I have a good set up. I can just clamp down and with less pressure and less attention to the pressure. Same with capo. Kind of a good guitar to record any type of players.
With a nut, I have habits that compensate my string pressure by what I’m hearing. I think we all do as we get a feel for an instrument. It seems to me the most accomplished players intuitively find the sweet spot. So someday maybe I will too. Lol
They are visualized when recording in frequency wave forms. You can see someone quickly lighten up or clamp down in the very beginning of chord changes and bring it into tune. Even varied by strings and fingers. You can see how well they are actually doing it. It actually sounds good and natural usually. But you hear it sounding noticeably out of tune for people all the time when they just clamp down. I usually ignore it unless it sounds shitty, but it’s there. Zero fret or a capo makes their playing sound better in a mix of other instruments in comparable frequencies. Lol
But... I do hate that ping Chris kept doing and been pain in my ass to chase fret buzz sometimes. Needs a little higher maintenance to keep a tight set up. Shim the break angle a few times. So glad not set neck. I’m generally just careful with the one I play and try not to jinx it. Lol
I know I know... you’re like he got serious again... check out the big brain on j-mo... bounce boom call the cleaner. Lol I just write authoritatively. Throw any subject at me and I’ll throw it back sounding like I know what I’m talking about. And sometimes I even believe it myself. Lol
If I use a Stainless Steel Zero Fret on one of my guitars with a Tremolo, Will the strings Saw away at the SS Fret and cut a groove in it? Anyone?
On a long enough timeline even stainless frets can wear
@@TexasToastGuitars Thanks so much for replying :) If it seems I'll have a fair amount of time before they wear, I can easily replace a zero fret quickly. Cheers :)
@Leon thecat Some one confidently told me the other day that Zero frets are only for helping intonation issues?
No, you will instead erode them and smooth them out. Lubricating them. Without changing height. Metal on metal do have less friction. SS fret are still very durable and will not wear. If you have stainless steel strings they will wear equally, but for the zero fret, a very long time, I think it would even survive the guitar.
Brian Mays guitar has a zero fret
Thanks for watching Leon, I love the The Red Special and the story behind it too.
I been owning BM guitar for about 4 years... it's zero fret now has two grooves under G and B strings making "ping" annoying noise when bend..
Should I take it to a Luther for a fret replacement ?.....any other solutions ? Cheers
do these guys actually don’t know about Eastwood Guitars?!
Brian May put zero fret on his guitar that he built with his father when he was young. And he still plays that guitar almost exclusively.
Yep
Just to add two great guitar designs with zero frets. Gypsy jazz players love their Selmer guitars, they have zero frets, (I have one by Dupont). And then there's Brian May's Red Special, it has a zero fret as well as a very cool vibrato design.
I'm not familiar with Selmer, I'll have to look them up
@@TexasToastGuitars Selmer is what Django Reinhardt played, it's a very snarky and aggressive acoustic guitar.
@@plexibreath Selmer of course is a big band instrument company particularly noted for excellent saxophones and other woodwinds. They got into acoustic guitars by making a Mario Maccaferri design and as it happened the gypsy jazz guys liked them. Although maccaferri was a classical guitarist the guitars became associated with gypsy jazz. A Selmer sound was what Willie Nelson really wanted when he got that Martin classical and had the Prismatone pickup put on it. But he didn't know of the Selmers. They also made some guitar amps in the 60s that were a little weird like everything guitar in Europe. A friend of mine found a Selmer grenadilla clarinet in the dumpster of the local salvation army store. It had cracks throughout the both barrels and the case stunk like Courtney Love's, umm, socks. I took it and burned the case and took off the keys, they're part silver! The grenadilla wood will make some good nuts or acoustic saddles and the mouthpiece and ligature will also bring a few bucks on eBay, but mostly the wood is good for guitar purposes. It would also make some fingerboard inlay dots. He also bagged me a copy of "Hollywood Madam", a rare smutty paperback that brings fifty bucks on the used book lists. He snags stuff like this for me and I do a little work for him. I'm building him a tube guitar amp now, he doesn't know it yet. Of course if he reads this he will, but, he doesn't read too well anyway.
Great video guys. As far as other questions and benefits, what got me in to the Zero Fret idea is the supposed better intonation. Is that factual?
Thanks for watching Zoidberg, a regular nut that is done properly and a zero fret that is done properly should each be able to intonate the same... now, you can also say the same thing about either one done wrong.
Where the zero fret really shines is when it is vs. a nut that has the slots too high (then you go out of tune when you fret the 1st) or even if the nut has a pinch point in it.
Yes.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Zero_Fret_Guitar_Intonation_jpg.jpg/701px-Zero_Fret_Guitar_Intonation_jpg.jpg
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Conventional_Nut_Guitar_Intonation.jpg/704px-Conventional_Nut_Guitar_Intonation.jpg
If everything else is the same. Same nut height. The reason is the friction. Nothing else. The less friction, the less things are braking the string, or keeping it from being that flexible that it should be. Since you can get away with a lower action, with a zero fret, it works to an advantage regarding intonation anyway. Fringe benefit!
The copy Chris made there looks amazing!!
Yeah, that one turned out really cool. We have several more Toastrite guitars coming soon, stay tuned.
Vigier Guitars uses a zero fret that is a set of 6 needle bearings that allows each section to be replaced. It is really a fantastic system. Also Brian May's homemade guitar has a zero fret, he explained the advantages of it and personally I trust his word on it being a good idea, he is an astrophysicist so I tend to trust an actual genius.
I'll have to check those guitars out. As far as a zero fret being a good idea, you don't have to have all your braincells to know why it is a cool idea. I think Brian May is an inspirational guy too.
The guy that worked on May's guitar in 2005 said the zero fret was worn clean through! LOL! He said the other frets had never been changed but the zero fret was "shagged as hell"!
And if you are really savvy you can do a Buzz Feiten style compensation with your zero fret. ;-).
I have been called a lot of things... Savvy isn't one of them hahaha
It seems to me that you would need more relief in the neck to avoid buzzing than you would on a regular nut. In our shop we do a lot of nut shimming/sanding to set the action to the customer's demand, as it's become more a subject of taste in recent years, especially with people refretting to or from jumbos. We do an (almost) level action from the 1st fret to whatever the foremost bridge-side fret is, with a standard for bow in the middle. I feel like this would lead to having an uneven action with very low string height towards the zero fret and higher action as you work your way upwards. Is that the case? This just seems less than ideal to me.
What do you do for guitar players that use a capo?
We set their action height to what they request within reason? I think it's wild I haven't set up (or even played) a single zero fret guitar in my days, I'm going to make it a point to try one out so I'm not as skeptical
I play a Fender American Special SSS Strat, and I find the same sound from the open strings and the fretted strings; no change at all.
Okay that's cool...right?
@@TexasToastGuitars yes like your content very interesting
Try to make this short & sweet, 1st acoustic I bought with some Christmas money, an Epiphone acoustic from the early mid 70s, had a broken nut, I was 13, offered the guy 50 bucks, got, not your top of the line guitar, Zero fret, bolt on neck, so it was my intro to fixing guitars.. forward 10yrs, loan it to a friend, well, ex friend, guitar gone, fast forward to today, walk in a pawn shop 2 months looking around, see an acoustic with a honey, amber top, I know it's from the 70s, look, it's an Epiphone like the one I use to own, for sentimental reasons I bought it, neck bowed, slight twist, 70 bucks, It's fixed, plays great, the only zero fret guitar I've ever had. Thanks for the video, I didn't realize how many guitars had the zero fret, at the time I didn't know the reasoning of it, hey I saw a Beatle playing an Epiphone, at 13 you'll try anything.
Thanks for watching James, glad you enjoyed the video. That is a cool story I'm glad you got your guitar back. The world is full of stories about the one that got away but every so often you hear about the one that got away and then you got it back again. Zero frets are a pretty slick solution to a tricky manufacturing problem. and has some real sonic properties too. Well, you know what I'm talking about.
Can you guys install a -1 fret on my guitar?
I don't know what you mean, please send me an email and we will get you sorted out Aaron
@@TexasToastGuitars he was being a smart ass
Hi there a lot of talk here, but not much meat in the meal.
I am going to put one in my $190 tele copy.will let you know how it goes.
Cheers
from Australia
Cool dude, Zero frets are pretty often over looked and much maligned.
Thanks for watching
I've got a couple of early 80's Gretsch Beasts with Dimarzio Super Distortion pickups. Zero fret and 24 other frets. They've both played like a dream. They should be more popular.
Totally cool Joe
First off, that Ventures replica is superb and I'm very pleased to know someone makes one with a wider nut! LOL That sits at the top of my wish list, now. I think quite a few Gretsch guitars had zero frets, along with Mosrite and others. Stainless steel makes sense. Does Chris find they stay in tune better (Bigsby guitars)?
Hi Michael, we don't do too much with stainless frets right now but who knows? There are some advantages and while it is a paint to work with some of these advantages are a direct result of the hardness. It breaks as much as it cuts. Doing a video on it in the next few days. That import replica of the Mosrite trem is surprisingly good. Chris relaly likes it
Several buddies of mine tried stainless frets and gave up on the idea. I had a Carvin with them and enjoyed it, but it wasn't a game changer. I was thinking specifically about the zero nut with a Bigsby'd guitar. I had an early Gretsch Tennessean with a zero nut and thought it worked well on several things, intonation and I suspected tuning stability. This was in the '70s and long before locking tuners, which I'm about to try on my Epiphone WildKat. It has Filter Trons and is my "Gretsch-lite" for now. Chris' Mosrite is really superb and my favorite replica. I hope to expand my budget and find out! Do you all know Kit Simon? I used to play with him in Vail and have been friends for a long time.
That's pretty much where we are coming down on stainless fretwire for now as well. I'm not going to say it is just a fad but I also don't think that standard nickle frets are going anywhere anytime soon.
I don't know Kit Simon
I like the zero glide nut. If you get wear in the zero fret you can replace the zero fret in 10 minutes. I actually made one using an evo fret too. Notched the nut in two places.....great to brighten tone and better intonation.]
Got a brass nut on a strat.....it definately changes the sound. I'd rather use a zero glide if did it again. Zero glide needs to use stainless steel for zero fret but....
I really should have a few of those things in stock. They are pretty cool
My first guitar was a yamaha like that one. But mine was an SG3, It had 3 pickups instead of 2, but otherwise it was a fantastic guitar. But it was the mid-eighties and I had to have humbuckers to rock. I so wish that I still had that one, but the ones I have seen are in the neighborhood of 2K, I let mine go for $125. Gotta go.... so depressed....
Oh man James, that is a bummer, those guitars are so cool and are way cooler for a couple hundred bucks. Sorry you let it go my friend.
Hey, Matt. Hey Chris. I love how amused Chris is about your jokes. You keep looking over, maybe hoping for a smile, and Chris never disappoints... he never freaking dissapounts to look into the camera totally stone faced 😂. I wanna guitar with a negative 2 fret so I can play all those great notes available behind the nut that sound like freaking Ken dolls having their masculinity ripped off by Barbie. Anyway, I love zero frets. Brian May put one one, The Red Special, or at least my okd replica had one. The action was like margarine (much like butter, but so close, I can't believe it's not butter. Seriously, tho, the guutars I'm building all have a zero fret. That 2 so far, so be afraid Texas Toast, very afraid. I don't know, tho, Ned Steinberger has never had an original idea in his life (wink, wink. Nod of the head, if ta know what I mean) please read the paraenthized in a British accent with a big nose.Thx.
Love the flipside music shirt! ;-)
Beautiful Mosrite-like guitar. I had a wild idea recently. A Super Strat with a Mosrite body. You know, Floyd Rose, hockey stick headstock, single bridge humbucker... you get the idea. Maybe if find a bucket of money, I'll have you guys build one for me.
Thanks for watching twinsmm1, I would love to make that guitar because it would irritate Chris hahaha
Actually, he would only bitch about it a little bit. We have a bunch more Toastrite projects that could very easily get 2x locking trems let me know if you want to do one and we'll work out payments.
www.texastoastguitars.com/product-page/toastrite
Cool! I meant to ask, What is the Mosrite style vibrato that you use?
I thought you said you wanted a Floyd?
We use an import vibrato that is the same one Hallmark uses
I did. But I also wondered about the vibrato that you used on the guitar in this video.obviously not a mosrite vibrato but very similar.
That Mosrite style guitar looks amazing. :o)
That one really did turn out awesome
The Zero Glide is very expensive for what it is, in fact rip off at £35, I bought one once and realised it was a waste of money. I make my own in 15 minuets, just cut the nut make 1/2 the width of the fret you intend to use. Then with a fret file make a cut between the nut and the zero point of the fingerboard. Job done.
My first zero-fret guitar was my Kramer Duke 6-string. Then each of my 5 Steinbergers had a 0-fret.
What I end up doing to my 0-fret guitars is notching the zero-fret when I do fret levelings. That's because I don't want to remove the string retainers behind the zero-fret, because I'm a lazy old man.
My aluminum sanding beams bang into the string retainers if I try to level the zero-fret along with the others.
Do you spray the final coats on your Guitars? if so would it be safe to say they have a Matt Finish? OHHh !! I crack myself up...
Oh, Chris does not let me do any of the top coats, my technique is terrible
Zero frets do make open strings sound less different than fretted ones but players LIKE the open string ring and that is why guitar rock music is usually in open string keys. Horn and piano music is in sharp and flat keys mostly. That’s how Keef figured out Chuck Berry didn’t write all those songs himself.
I guessing rock musicians love for open string keys.. (E,A,D,G) has as much to do with the reaction you get when you ask your rhythm guitarist to play the next one in A flat.
Wamgo C - IMHO, playing in *open-string friendly* keys is more because it is *easier* to play using the open keys...
40 odd years ago, my brother had a Shergold guitar (a British guitar from the early 70's that also made guitars under the Hayman brand name) which had, as i recall a zero fret, with an unusually large gap between the "nut" and the fret. But, that guitar had an amazingly low and easy action to it. Hayman have recently made a comeback of sorts with a new design from Patrick Eggle, but, noticeably without the zero fret. So go figure!
Hi Tim, Thanks for watching.
As cool as a zero fret can be I think the guitar buying public, in general, is not interested. In fact, I'd say that you will turn off potential buyers if you have a guitar with a zero fret. I know I don't guild zero fret necks unless I'm asked specifically to do so, It's too bad... because like you were saying the playability can be really great.
Certainly Gibson have stepped back on their attempts in 2015(?) to put those combination nut and zero fret thingies on their range. Bought a cheap Les Paul double cut with P90s on a year or so ago (too cheap to ignore) and, i have to say, i really like the guitar. Interestingly, as the original part was made from brass, and they had a number of complaints about them "notching" thy replaced them with a steel version. Have to say, i emailed Gibson Europe about the replacement and they just mailed me one. So good service as far as I am concerned.
Zero-frets were very commonly used by European guitar manufacturers from the 1950s through the 1970s. There was Shergold, plus a lot more: The Burns guitars for Hank Marvin, the Vox teardrop guitar that Brian Jones had - and of course, the Hofner basses played by Paul McCartney. That cultural fashion was also partly why Brian May's legendary homemade Red Special guitar has one.
And those instruments are all great!
James Ormston Burns was a genius and had a hand in all of those names. Hayman was the one that had a round clear disk thingy in the headstock as I recall. Shergold was famous for a modulkar doubleneck they did for someone, maybe Mike Rutherford, and a six string bass some guy in a punk band had oneitis for and used exclusively, Eastwood has a copy in its oeuvre.
But most of those guitars as cool as they looked were clunky in actual practice.
Nice Video. More Information is always better. \m/
Thanks Gavin, I like your style my friend
Most of my guitars have them now, because of zero glide. Tuning stability and action are both better, nuff said. I don't believe there is any compromise of tone.
They seem pretty cool to me those Zero-Glide nuts
but why not jsut use a metal nut? they wear slower, sound the same, and they're still adjustable
I don't know?
Hang on folks, there's a new one the Zero Glide Nut:goldtonemusicgroup.com/zeroglide/ which is the Zero fret attached to the Nut. With this Gizmo the intonation on any stringed instrument stays put, better action, better tone, & this one almost never wears out because it's made out of a Stronger Stainless steel.
Yep those are pretty cool
@@TexasToastGuitars I'd imagine that all stringed instruments (and homemade ones too) should have a Zero fret so that the strings slide smoothly.
@@TexasToastGuitars They're also working on Zero Glide nuts for Bowed instruments that are curved to follow the Curved Fingerboard (or Fret board if it's a fretted Violin).
@@TexasToastGuitars Some fretless Basses have a Zero fret near the nut to reduce the string contact in the nut by a big amount & to make the open string sound like the fretted string, the fingerboard is now made out of Metal & the guide lines are silk screened. The only other fretless instruments that sadly don't have a Zero Glide nut are Orchestral Bowed instruments.
I made a brass nut once I never noticed much difference though.
As you know, these were really popular in the 70's, I hardly ever see them anymore
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who has a cluttered work bench. At least you don't have to move much.
It gets crazy. That was the old shop and it was really cramped