I need some feasible advice.
I bought a uke with a 1.5" nut.
It's nice to have extra room between strings, however, it is very difficult to make barre chords without missing one of the notes. I've been trying different hand positions, but nothing seems to work consistently.
Does anyone have any ideas, short of trading it off?
Hi Nickie,
As many folks have said before, it's not only about nut width, but also about 'string spread' as in distance from G to A strings.
FYI A 1.5" nut is almost 38mm.
You can have a new nut made that has the string spread closer to what you are used to, or get a nut blank for a few $ and notch the slots yourself. Way easier than dumping that instrument.
Conversely lots of other ukes have a 1.38" (35mm) nut width and the spacing of the string spread varies widely from ~26 up to ~33mm, so all of this needs to be considered.
If you can get a nut blank, you can use a simple hacksaw blade to made the initial nut slots, and a simple nail file to widen them as needed. The main thing is that this is a painstakingly iterative process that requires you to go
very slow and take off only a little at a time.
Depending if your nut is plastic or bone - with plastic the hacksaw will take off lots more material per stroke of the blade than bone, since plastic is much softer then bone, so this needs to be figured into your hands-on procedure.
Maybe one option is to consult your Loprinzi friend and see if they can help with the hands-on. For one with experience and the proper tools, cutting nut slots and seating a new nut, should take maybe 30 mins or less....
Hope this helps