Cracked Nut

Hi everyone,

I am having an issue. Just started picking up the guitar in the past couple weeks. Using an old fender acoustic (circa 1970's... can't remember the model of the top of my head). Anyways, I noticed the nut is cracked in the center. I am a newbie to the guitar and am alittle cautious on fixing it myself. Anyone have suggestions? is it an easy fix?

Also, could the cracked nut be the cause of alittle string buzzing im getting on my lower E string? I've had some mention the cracked nut could cause my action to be off, or atleast shift a lower E string so it sits on the corner of the frets (causing buzzing?)... again im not a tech head with this type of thing so not sure if that is an insane comment.

Anyways, thanks for any help you guys can give.

Cheers,
Adam

There's not a whole lot you can do with a cracked nut. It could shift and cause the problems you mention. You should be able to observe if this is the case. You could possibly try hot glue on it, but if the crack is in a string slot, I doubt you'll get it to hold long.

This if course involves removing the nut in the first place - carefully!. then cleaning the old glue out of the slot, fixing the nut and then regluing it into place. And then it might not hold.

This happened to me on my old acoustic a long time ago, and I replaced the nut with one the music store happened to have. Wasn't even the correct size exactly, but it holds true to this day. You should probably just plan on buying a new nut.

If you are not up to the installation and possible slot adjustment, you can take it to a guitar repair and let them do it.

Try posting in the Guitar Tech forum in the full access section. There might be some good advice forthcoming. :)