HELP!! String Falls out of nut.

[nightcityburn]

Hi,

I play in a hardcore band, and of course we play in Drop C.

Well, drop C on my Jazz Bass is much lower than it is set up to play, and when I play the string open, and hard I have the tendency to pull the string out of the nut at the top of the neck.

I would like to know if there's any way to keep the strings in the nut at the top of the neck. My idea would be to sand i slightly deeper groove into the nut in the neck.

Any Ideas, solutions, anything.

Thanks.

P.S. This is my first post.

[thebassclef]

First off, Welcome to TB.

What kind of bass do you play, and what gauge strings are you using? If the guage you are using is bigger than what came stock, the nut may need to be filed. If it just because of your tuning, you might be able to put a string nut on the E and A string to help hold them in place. But, That depends on if you have room on your headstock.

[emils]

How about re-stringing your bass BEAD instead of using EADG dowtuned. The way you have it tuned now i'm guessing the E string is quite floppy and that is why it falls out of the nut. You'd have to reshape your nut but this is not such a hard thing to do. Just a thought.

[nightcityburn]

I play a Highway 1 Jazz Bass, with GHS Bass boomer Medium-Light strings. The gauges of the strings go as follows. I bought the bass used, so i'm not sure what the original gauge of the strings were.

How would I go about reshaping the nut?

Any special files that I would need to get?

Would it be easier to just get smaller gauge string?

Any Suggestions would be appreciated.

Retuning to BEAD isn't ideal, just because we are about to play a show and I really am not looking to transpose everything, not that is would be very much effort, I just want this to go off as solid as possible.

Thanks.

[snowdan]

try to get a 110 or 115 boomer single string. these exist. at least the 110.

[HELLonWheels187]

Raising the action might help as well, I'm not sure though, it just sounds like a good idea.

[SuperDuck]

How many times is your string wound around the post on the tuning key? The goal is to have enough string windings going from top to bottom to produce some downforce on the string over the nut.

If you have only one or two wraps that leave the string almost straight across from the fretboard to the tuning post, you might be popping out because of that. The string should go down at an angle between the tuning key and the nut.

[tplyons]

You're tuning lower and want lighter strings?

Other way man. Heavier strings.

[permagrin]

If you don't want to re-learn songs by stringing BEAD, you might get a better setup using a standard B string for your C - that's only a half-step up and will have a little more tension as well (i think this would be much more favorable than a floppy standard E string, detuned so far). Don't know what pitches you have on the other strings (that is, your definition of "drop C')... once you settle on which standard strings to use for your non-standard tuning, check the neck relief because the tension difference from what you have now could be significant enough to warrant an adjustment.

You'll have to widen the nut slot(s) without making it deeper, and your bridge may not be compatible with the larger diameter, and you may have trouble intonating (I found taper wounds help when putting a B string on a 4-string bass)... still, it's probably worth it for you.

[EADG mx]

You could get a light gauge 5 string set and use the BEAD strings and tune them up to CFBbEb. Other than that, if your nut doesn't need filing, and your strings are wrapped properly around the tuning post (at least 3 times), I'd try a string tree.