De-fretting my Ibanez question

[Rexel Matador]

Hi everyone,

I'm doing a fretless conversion on an Ibanez SR300E. It's going fine so far, but now I need to lower the nut. Stupidly, I haven't kept the frets to check how high they were.

The Ibanez website just calls them "medium". Does anyone have any idea how much nut I should take off?

Thanks!

[MoonBassAlpha]

I've just taken down the individual slots with a needle file almost right down to the fretboard when I've done this. You hardly need any clearance from the fingerboard at the nut.
You may also find you need a slight shim in the neck pocket to get the bridge down low enough to get the action right. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.

[Grangur]

What I'd be inclined to do is remove the nut and sand something off the bottom. After all, you're wanting to lower all the strings, so lowering the nut makes sense.

The way to measure the string height in the nut is to fret the strings at the 3rd fret and to have space for a business card to slide under the strings at the 1st fret. Some may like the strings lower, but this is a starting point.

[Rexel Matador]

Thanks guys, that's very helpful. I'll err on the side of caution and I can always take more off if need be.

Grangur, I agree, I was planning to go at the bottom of the nut rather than the slots. The slots are good as they are and probably a lot easier to mess up!

[Grangur]

If you do take the nut too low, you can always lift it back up by adding a veneer to bottom of the slot in the neck.

If you need it and don't have any veneer, drop me a PM.

[Rexel Matador]

Good call, I think I have some left over from filling the fret slots!