Last week a customer brought me a Washburn acoustic guitar with narrow string spacing that he found difficult to play cleanly. He asked me to widen the string spacing which led me down a luthier’s rabbit hole trying to research the most widely preferred string and nut spacing.
It turns out the nut width on steel string guitars doesn’t vary much (basically from 1 11/16 to 1 ¾ inches). But the spacing of the strings within that nut can vary a LOT. As with this Washburn, the string spacing has a much bigger effect on playability than the nut width. Strange, then, that most guitar manufacturers only list the nut width of their guitars, but not the string spacing!
After making and installing a new bone nut, I had a happy customer. Do you know your preferred string spacing?