Model 5000-00 Nut Slotted Flat or Curved Bottom R9.5 L42.85mm (Select Material)

The original nut that came with my Fender American Performer strat was a nightmare from the beginning.

After working on the nut slots over and over with little improvement, I had enough!

I dropped this graph tech nut right in after I sanded down the tab and made a couple passes on the sides. Now I have fantastic tuning stability and improved resonance.

Installed on a 1997 American Strat with a 9.5" radius, to replace an OG black Graphtech nut that was probably close to 25 years old. Aside from the need to file down the center tab to fit the radiused nut slot, it was very nearly, but not quite, a drop in installation - might have been an oddity of the particular slot but I had to sand the nut slightly to get it to fit the slightly-narrower slot, and then after installing the nut itself was a fraction of a millimeter wider than the slot (I suspect due to the rounded fretboard edges and, again, guitar-specific idiosyncrasies. Beyond that, while not strictly necessary, I also contoured the shoulders a little more to align better with the rounded edges, but this was cosmetic more than functional. Otherwise, it was flawless - the tech who had installed the previous nut seems to have shimmed it ever-so-slightly with maybe a half millimeter of what looks like mahogany - I think this was being conservative because the replacement, unshimmed, was flawless, on a guitar with jumbo frets replacing the stock medium jumbos no less. No open position buzz, and just taking that half mm or so off the action across the length of the neck made a perceptible difference in how this guitar plays - it's up there with my Suhrs now.

Tonally, tough to say since this was replacing an existing Graphtech nut, but open chords do seem a little fuller and more resonant now, subtle but sort of "bigger" in both the lows and the highs. Not wildly different,…