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Fret Spacing Woes

I am marking out frets for the first time. It's a short-scale diddley bow, turned out to be a 18 7/8" scale. I am using Stewart MacDonald's scale calculator. The scale looks right, and the other frets are turning out okay, but the first fret is a full step different from the open note, instead of a half step. I compared it to a factory-made guitar I have, and it's definitely a full step. Any ideas what may have caused this? Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Dave S on March 14, 2015 at 8:26am

Update: the action was too high, so it had a bending effect. Lesson learned.

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on March 14, 2015 at 1:08pm

Yep, which is why we use a floating bridge: set the action where you want it, and adjust the bridge to compensate... Glad you figured it out!

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Permalink Reply by Dave S on March 15, 2015 at 12:56am

The nut was a screw, so I just tightened it down! I thought about deleting the conversation, but I thought I'd let others learn from my mistakes.

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Fret Spacing Woes

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