Anybody tried these Hosco nut files?

Evan

I recently bought a set of Hosco double sided nut files from Axecaster, but found them to cut way to wide. I emailed them this morning asking for a solution (refund, swap whatever). Are the Hosco individual files better? I also saw these and wondered if anyone here has any knowledge of them. 

They seem reasonably priced and nice and neat. What do you think?

https://www.axecaster.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=695

Fez

The set I have seem ok.

paulnb57

I have the Hosco, 10 gauge double sided ones, done many nuts, never had an issue

Evan

Well, it seems I might have faulty set, the g and b strings on my Tele are pinging about when I bend them.

axisus

I have the double sided set and they seem to work fine.

Evan

Is it me then? I used them to deepen the slots on a nut that was cut too high and I had to cut quite deep to get them to the right height. I noticed that the files are v shaped and not parallel as on the individual files, but surely they shouldn’t go much beyond the gauge they’re intended to cut, should they?

Funkfingers

Nut slotting files should have a half-round cutting face and parallel sides that can not cut or snag.

Pinging usually indicates that a string is snagging on something within the slot. That could be the sides of the slot or its "floor". 

Popular errors include not angling the floor of the slot at a steep enough angle and not rounding off some of the edges of the slots on the headstock side of the nut. 

Finally, as a Fender Jaguar owner, I feel obliged to point out that some of us cherish those pinging noises and inharmonic overtones.

notonlybutalso

I have the same set of double sides and found exactly the same issue. They definitely cut too wide for my taste, even if they aren't pinging they allow far too much lateral movement of the string in the slot. The whole reason nut files are expensive is because they are supposedly cut to very fine tolerances but I haven't found that with the hoscos. I use the 10 gauge file for the g, b and e slots now and it helps

Fuengi

Evan said:

Well, it seems I might have faulty set, the g and b strings on my Tele are pinging about when I bend them.

I had a similar issue with Hosco nut files. I put it down to my not filing perfectly straight. Some light fettling, a bit of lubricant and some graphite solved the problem, but some clever soul suggested using a craft knife to ensure there were no burrs at the bottom of the slot. 

downbytheriver

I have that exact set - in my experience they cut near perfectly - almost too tight - I put a set of 10-48s on and they were too tight on the lower strings. I opened them out slightly with other files - wish I could get additional files. By the way to tend not to use the blue handle - just the files on their own 

steamabacus

Evan said:

Well, it seems I might have faulty set, the g and b strings on my Tele are pinging about when I bend them.

Try some fine wet & dry paper around a bit of old guitar string (of the correct gauge for the slot) to polish up the bottom of the slot. It may just be a bit of unevenness at the bottom of the slot.

Evan

Ok, you’ve all given me some different perspectives, I’ll take all your suggestions on board, but for 70 odd quid I expected something a bit better. If they’ll take them back, I’ll either order some of the Hosco individual files, or if I can get a refund I might get some Stewmac ones, which are suppose to be good, right? 

To my surprise, I found out that I can get a set imported for about £100 including shipping ($17). Hopefully, they’ll slip past customs and excise unnoticed - I expected they’d be quite a bit more than that.

BillDL

I think part of the problem with nut files, or more correctly using them effectively, is when the total height of the nut is already too tall and you have to cut down through an unnecessary amount of material to get the slots to the correct depth.  In an ideal world a fret file should have absolutely parallel sides and be of a uniform thickness matching the slot it's intended to cut, but handling files like that for your treble strings would be like using a 0.010 and 0.013 feeler gauge, both of which are far too flexible to control. You need a thicker handle or area on the file to stiffen it and prevent the flex and to control your filing motions more accurately.

I have seen some nut files that seem to have parallel-sided files mounted into a handle.  Imagine a thin flexible feeler gauge with lollipop sticks stuck along the upper part on both sides leaving only a thin edge of the guage below the edges of the lollipop sticks.  It looked as though they only have a small depth of the actual "blade" protruding, so you would probably have to reduce the overall height of the whole saddle before using it because of the limited depth of cut available from the blade.  The Hosco nut files are fairly well gauged at their cutting edges, but they start tapering and getting thicker where if you are cutting slots that are deeper than they need to be the tops of the slots will be wider than they should be. They are intended for cutting quite shallow slots.

When I first started tinkering with guitars I improvised with various tools including feeler gauges with P400 wet & dry paper wrapped around them.  I actually used old bits of wound strings of the appropriate gauges glued into fine grooves in thin lengths of wood to act as rounding off files for the bass strings.  The problem was consistency.  A nut file should allow you to do even forward strokes with the right pressure rather than having to do lots of back and forward movements where the angle of the file can move with each pass.

The slots for the treble strings shouldn't really need to be any deeper than (or significantly more than) the thickness of the strings that go into them, and the bass strings usually work best if they aren't totally buried in the slots and a small amount still protrudes above the top of the nut.  It can vary depending on the guitar, for example the scale length and resultant differences in string tension, whether it has a tremolo bridge, whether it has one or more string trees to pull the strings down, whether the strings are 6-in-line straight through to the tuner shafts or angled like 3-a-side headstocks, how hard the player strums and picks, and so on, but it's common to see Fender nuts where the slots for the strings are 3 or 4 times deeper than they need to be.  Cutting down through that excess amount of material with a file that starts to widen out the top of the slot the deeper it goes can leave unsighly slots that sometimes become problematic.  If you file down the overall height of the nut to almost the height you want it to be before cutting the slots to the correct depths usually results in a neater slot.  You should be able to weave a very thin 0.5mm celluloid pick under the 1st, over the 2nd, and under the 3rd at the first fret and it should not raise the first string out of its slot or allow it to ping out if you pick that string.  That, of course, is a very rudimentary check.  You don't want to file off the top of the nut too much, but equally so it's much harder to cut a slot while there is excess material to go down through.

Kalimna

BillDL said:

I think part of the problem with nut files, or more correctly using them effectively, is when the total height of the nut is already too tall and you have to cut down through an unnecessary amount of meterial to get the slots to the correct depth.  In an ideal world a fret file should have absolutely parallel sides and be of a uniform thickness matching the slot it's intended to cut, but handling files like that for your treble strings would be like using a 0.010 and 0.013 feeler gauge, both of which are far too flexible to control. You need a thicker handle or area on the file to stiffen it and prevent the flex and to control your filing motions more accurately.

I have seen some nut files that seem to have parallel-sided files mounted into a handle.  Imagine a thin flexible feeler gauge with lollipop sticks stuck along the upper part on both sides leaving only a thin edge of the guage below the edges of the lollipop sticks.  It looked as though they only have a small depth of the actual "blade" protruding, so you would probably have to reduce the overall height of the whole saddle before using it because of the limited depth of cut available from the blade.  The Hosco nut files are fairly well gauged at their cutting edges, but they start tapering and getting thicker where if you are cutting slots that are deeper than they need to be the tops of the slots will be wider than they should be. They are intended for cutting quite shallow slots.

When I first started tinkering with guitars I improvised with various tools including feeler gauges with P400 wet & dry paper wrapped around them.  I actually used old bits of wound strings of the appropriate gauges glued into fine grooves in thin lengths of wood to act as rounding off files for the bass strings.  The problem was consistency.  A nut file should allow you to do even forward strokes with the right pressure rather than having to do lots of back and forward movements where the angle of the file can move with each pass.

The slots for the treble strings shouldn't really need to be any deeper than (or significantly more than) the thickness of the strings that go into them, and the bass strings usually work best if they aren't totally buried in the slots and a small amount still protrudes above the top of the nut.  It can vary depending on the guitar, for example the scale length and resultant differences in string tension, whether it has a tremolo bridge, whether it has one or more string trees to pull the strings down, whether the strings are 6-in-line straight through to the tuner shafts or angled like 3-a-side headstocks, how hard the player strums and picks, and so on, but it's common to see Fender nuts where the slots for the strings are 3 or 4 times deeper than they need to be.  Cutting down through that excess amount of material with a file that starts to widen out the top of the slot the deeper it goes can leave unsighly slots that sometimes become problematic.  If you file down the overall height of the nut to almost the height you want it to be before cutting the slots to the correct depths usually results in a neater slot.  You should be able to weave a very thin 0.5mm celluloid pick under the 1st, over the 2nd, and under the 3rd at the first fret and it should not raise the first string out of its slot or allow it to ping out if you pick that string.  That, of course, is a very rudimentary check.  You don't want to file off the top of the nut too much, but equally so it's much harder to cut a slot while there is excess material to go down through.

A very clear discussion on filing nut slots. I think the key message is that if the top of the string is sitting below the top of the nut, then the nut itself is too high and needs correcting.

notonlybutalso

I have used them on many nuts at varying depths and yes while you are right in what you say, even though the hoscos are cutting a triangular channel, the bottom of that channel should be exactly the rated width. I like the triangular cut for the stability of the file and the lack of a need to open up the channel at the top, but like I say at the very bottom it should be perfectly correct and isnt

Evan

notonlybutalso said:

I have used them on many nuts at varying depths and yes while you are right in what you say, even though the hoscos are cutting a triangular channel, the bottom of that channel should be exactly the rated width. I like the triangular cut for the stability of the file and the lack of a need to open up the channel at the top, but like I say at the very bottom it should be perfectly correct and isn’t. 

Exactly, I’ve just used the .010 file to cut a g string slot, when I’m supposed to use the .017 file.

notonlybutalso

Evan said:

notonlybutalso said:

I have used them on many nuts at varying depths and yes while you are right in what you say, even though the hoscos are cutting a triangular channel, the bottom of that channel should be exactly the rated width. I like the triangular cut for the stability of the file and the lack of a need to open up the channel at the top, but like I say at the very bottom it should be perfectly correct and isn’t. 

Exactly, I’ve just used the .010 file to cut a g string slot, when I’m supposed to use the .017 file.

Yep exactly what I do, not good enough for the price really

BillDL

Evan said:

Exactly, I’ve just used the .010 file to cut a g string slot, when I’m supposed to use the .017 file.

You have to be quite careful doing that.  The 0.010 file is obviously sharper than the 0.017 one, so if you inadvertently move it clockwise or anticlockwise (looking down the file) between strokes you can end up with two narrow grooves at the bottom of the slot.  That's when you will hear a pinging noise if you bend the G string down near the nut and and it skips over the little bridge of material between the narrow channels.

Evan

BillDL said:

Evan said:

Exactly, I’ve just used the .010 file to cut a g string slot, when I’m supposed to use the .017 file.

You have to be quite careful doing that.  The 0.010 file is obviously sharper than the 0.017 one, so if you inadvertently move it clockwise or anticlockwise (looking down the file) between strokes you can end up with two narrow grooves at the bottom of the slot.  That's when you will hear a pinging noise if you bend the G string down near the nut and and it skips over the little bridge of material between the narrow channels.

Point taken, but the pinging g string slot was cut with the .017 file, not the .010.

BillDL

Hmmm.  Strange one that.

Crazed_Fandango

I'm so glad I found this thread as I was about to buy a set of Hosco files for a pawn shop guitar I picked up at the weekend.

£79 for a tool I'd likely only use once, is a bit extravagant, but I was hoping to acquire a new skill, but seems they aren't fit for purpose; so I'll pay my tech £30 and get a decent job done.