I re-measured the Guild X500T today. This one is definitely 1 11/16 nut width. Used my digital caliper. It is not the smaller nut width. Guild guitars seem to be all over the place on nut width.
One of the first things I remember Hans explaining here many years ago was that
in Westerly every single neck was given final shaping by hand on belt/spindle sanders, so no two are exactly the same except by coincidence.
So yes the shaper might have been attempting to keep to a profile template (and apparently that changed too over time) but inevitably there was gonna be minute variations of the finished necks.
If a neck's within a 32nd or so of a standard spec I think that's the most likely reason and it's supposed to be whatever it's closest to.
There were 3 basic specs: 1-5/8; 1-11/16; and by far the least common was 1-3/4.
In electrics there's a lot higher percentage of 1-5/8 specs especially for the 24-3/4 scale instruments, acoustics have a much higher percentage of 1-11/16 necks.
Even so we see acoustics especially from the mid-late '80's that appear to have been intentionally built with 1-5/8 nuts even though catalog spec was 1-11/16.
Another possibility is that your guitar was made during a running spec change, late '95 seemed to be a tail-end of a "wide nut era" when many high-end acoustics got 1-3/4" nuts even while spec was still 1-11/16, so maybe that's a possibility with yours; but Fender had just bought 'em and appeared to tighten up on keeping to spec through close of Westerly, their influence being felt by '96.
So TX's note that most of the ones he's seen may have been 1-5/8 indicate they weren't purely random on nut width, they still implemented changes without any formal announcement or start dates that I can recall seeing either.
If a spec change was due, they appear to have implemented it whenever they ran out of the old parts, that's all.
Or heck, if it wasn't a high volume model and they got an order, a specific guitar may well have been subject to whatever they had on hand to complete the build as Hans notes here:
http://www.letstalkguild.com/ltg/showthread.php?199192-question-on-an-X88-Crue:
Hello tafty,
Welcome! Not clear if the photo you posted shows the headstock of the actual guitar you bought or if it one like that?
Anyway, the X-88 was available with the 'droopy' headstock style, but it would be somewhat unusual with that logo.
It is possible that Guild used an older neck after an order came in; that would not be unusual for Guild.The photo you posted also shows a string clamp that should go with a Washburn Wonderbar vibrato unit, so if that's your guitar I'm curious if it has the 'Wonderbar' installed as well!
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
There's a
lot to be read between those lines.
This used to make a lot of us scratch our heads.
Now I find it to be beautifully organic.
After all, would we want
people to look exactly the same?
Welcome aboard!
:friendly_wink: