Locking nut on an angled headstock

[Allen Hanford]

I have an old floyd Rose that I want to install one one of my craigslist Epiphones but I'm not enthusiastic about drilling through the weakest part of the neck on an angled headstock.

Is there another locking nut I can substitute?

[Barry Daniels]

Can't help you on that one. Personally, I don't like Floyd Rose bridges and locking nuts. Trying to keep a guitar in tune with that setup is next to impossible.

An option to the Floyd Rose nut would be to use a normal nut that had well polished slots, and then use locking tuners with no extra string wrapped around the tuner posts.

[Allen Hanford]

Thanks for replying.

I never heard that about FR tremolos. I haven't used this one in ages but my memory of it is that once the strings got really stretched out it was okay.

I put it on the first guitar I built then realized I didn't really use it. I'm only going back to it now because there's some songs I'm recording where I'd like to use it. I doubt I'll ever improvise with one.

I'm half hoping there's nothing available for this application because that would mean I get to make something in my little machine shop

[Barry Daniels]

There are not a lot of options for locking nuts. Besides the Floyd Rose I only see two other brands on the All Parts website, which is one made by Kahler and one by Schaller. I am not sure if they also require holes completely through the neck for mounting like the FR but they probably do. One of the big issues with locking nuts is they only come with one string spacing and they are difficult to have fine adjustment of string height. I much prefer a handmade bone nut which can be made to fit the neck precisely.

[Allen Hanford]

What if I made something like this? the through holes would be well away from the angled part and the strings would pass over a sacrificial piece of brass or aluminum. That piece could be filed to match the curve of the first fret with ramp-like slots leading up to the front edge:

[JC Whitney]

Very nice - safe to say that your truss rod nut is at the bridge end of the neck?

[Allen Hanford]

No, I was trying to make it work with the adjustment on the nut end. However, now that you mention it the whole thing would have to come off for a truss rod adjustment, which is sub-optimal at best. I bet I could make the adjustment accessible, though.

If I were building the neck from scratch I'd put the truss rod in the other way around.

[JC Whitney]

Looks like you could add truss nut access pretty easily (with apologies for hacking up your image). Perhaps use oval head countersunk bolts on the strap instead of button heads to allow a clearer tool path into the truss nut?

[Allen Hanford]

I was thinking along the same lines. I did away with the top bolt because I think it was overkill and would have meant drilling through the LP signature on the guitar I'm using. I doubled the size of the woodscrews and moved them further away from the center. I think this one is better looking, too

[JC Whitney]

Looking good.

[Jim McConkey]

Not relevant to this discussion, but we have a CAD section that would love to hear about how you modeled this!

[Allen Hanford]

Not relevant to this discussion, but we have a CAD section that would love to hear about how you modeled this!

Thanks. I don't really do cad. I use Cinema4D which is really just for illustration. After that I do everything on a lathe and and milling machine.