Fly Nuts through the years

[vjmanzo]

There were four nuts used on Fly guitars between 1993 and 2015:

In 1993, @Ken Parker used a mold with nut slots in the mold to make nuts from delrin-like material. In the same year, he switched to milling nuts from Corian; the Fly Nylon continued to feature a Corian nut throughout its production, but, ultimately, and also in 1993-1994, Ken used Graphtech to injection-mold nuts from their proprietary graphite-type material. Around 2010, USM began using Gibson-style nuts on the Fly.

The Fly nut width is Fly nut width 1.6875 (1 11/16”).
Fun fact: the first three Fly Nylons were built by Ken for NAMM and they were 2" at the nut, all others were 1.850".

#NutIssues

[Mr303]

Must be the covid isolation....I got a chuckle from the subject line.....thanks VJ!

Carry on

[vjmanzo]

[roninracer]

Those are all cool but they don't seem to completely match my '99 MidiFly (which is essentially a NiteFly)

The edges seem rounder than mine:

[vjmanzo]

Looks good, @roninracer; the NiteFlys all use the Graph Tech nut (as far as I know); the shape may have changed slightly through the years, but it’s the same material. It’s possible that late NiteFlys used the Gibson-style nut, but I’ve never seen that. The photo is a little blurry, but yours looks like the Graph Tech to me.

[TalM]

Hi,

Found this document from GraphTech which specifies nut replacements for the Fly series.
Did anyone try it? The models are shaped a bit different from the stock ones but they might be a good source?

Cheers,

[vjmanzo]

Good info, @TalM; I believe that’s the last nut pictured in the photo in the original post. A quick search of the part number yielded this.

I have had that nut on two Flys; one of which I swapped when we were doing the 12-string Fly; there’s nothing bad about it, in my opinion. I think the difference in shape (compared to the original) is the main drawback if you’re hoping to replace a nut with this one.

[Dingus]

Just curious, is there a hard standard on which nut was used on Flys in what time period? I've seen the white nut a few times on the older ones but now have seen one from the 2000's. Do we care other than the black nut looks better? Thanks.

[Dingus]

Bah! I found the thread discussing this sorry. Apparently the fly I just got has the "milled corian" type nut. Cool??

[Dingus]

So I can now ask for 10k for my fly because it has the rare, and super aerodynamic "milled corian" right?

[mmmguitar]

So I can now ask for 10k for my fly because it has the rare, and super aerodynamic "milled corian" right?

Sky’s the limit, lately.

[vjmanzo]