zero fret?

[blindboygrunt]

While browsing on eBay I sometimes see guitars with a fret immediately below the nut. 'Zero fret' ? Right? What's the deal with these ? Why? And umm .... Any problem? Etc etc

[Mojorule]

Right.

 

Depending on the guitar, it could be a sign of quality (Gretsches have them, I guess they smooth out the tonal differences between open chords and barrés a touch, though probably not entirely, and they may be a belt-and-braces approach to getting intonation right - PM should be able to say what effect if any they really have, since he has a couple of nice Gretsches), or a sign that the guitar is a pile of old pants (my sister-in-law's ancient unidentifiable Eastern Bloc acoustic which is below beater status, and which has no real headstock pitch, but an approximation of the Fender string-tree system, where a bar between the nut and the machine heads holds the strings down enough to achieve some sort of break angle, and where the zero fret is almost certainly essential to achieving anything approaching intonation, even for cowboy chords). Play before you buy!

[RusRob]

You may be interested in this thread I started over at the Official Luthiers Forum:

 

Zero Fret or Not?

 

I am just starting my first build and ordered the wrong neck which had a Zero Fret slot and needed some advice.

 

 

A Zero Fret is not necessarily the sign of a cheap guitar although in the 60's and early 70's a lot of inexpensive guitars were build with them.

 

There is a lot of good info about it in that thread.

 

Bob

[ChrisM]

In this months issue of Premier Guitar there was a good article on the zero fret. Check it out http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/String_Nut_or_Zero_Fret

[ponty]

I remember old Eko guitars had them. Martin Carthy (UK) had one added to his

Martin 000-18, and Englands most well known guitar maker - Fylde - utilisers them.

http://www.fyldeguitars.com/

I think if it made much difference, it would be standard for all guitars.

[mountainpicker]

Gypsy jazz guitars have them. I think even Django's Selmer had one. And he wasn't a lightweight.

[Hogeye]

The zero fret is a good idea if the owner has no idea how to cut the slots in the fret nut. This small overlooked problem can make a guy crazy with intonation problems let alone buzzing problems.

[ParlourMan]

Never had an acoustic with a zero fret, but as mojo mentioned I do have gretsches that have the zero fret and Gretsches which don't. There's little difference to notice to be honest. My understanding in electric terms (and probably the same for acoustic too) was that it reduces the difference between fretted sounds and open sounds. To which degree that works is as subjective as tone.

 

Between guitars with a zero fret and those without through the same amp etc... I see no loss of sustain in those with a zero fret and no significant gain of anything for a guitar which has no zero fret, so seems to be not too much more than a design choice really. I quite like them really, and if any difference is apparent it would be that those guitars which come with a zero fret tend to lead to less of a 'death grip' down that side of the neck for some players. The downside, well at some point that fret is going to need replaced and as it's in constant use probably before other frets need replaced.

 

really no big deal to the player, shouldn't take more than two minutes to adjust.

[Jayyj]

I have a couple of Fylde guitars and I should stress that the nuts are every bit as carefully cut as any guitar without a zero fret. I'm not convinced I could tell the difference between with and without in a blind test but they're incredibly good sounding guitars. My other experiences with zero frets have been Hofners and Ekos where it was undoubtedly a labour saving device.

[zombywoof]

If the purpose is to correct the spacing from the nut to the 1st fret it would seem to be an early attempt to achieve what the Feiten tuning system does.