Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states that any headline ending with a question mark can be answered, ‘no’.

Does this law hold here?

Inexpensive nut file review. Are they any good?

Ages back, I talked about an alternative for proper gauged, guitar nut files that I’d seen touted around. That time it was welding nozzle tip cleaners and my experience of them wasn’t great. They didn’t do a particularly good job.

During that article, though, I mentioned I’d ordered a set of low-priced gauged nut files — direct from China — on eBay. I promised to let you know whether these were a potential alternative to shelling out for a ‘proper’ set of nut files.

Well, those eBay nut files have been sitting on my work bench for months, daring me to try them out but I just didn’t get to it.

Until this week.

I picked a scrap piece of bone and went at it with the files. How did I get on? Well, Betteridge might be correct.

They’re not very good.

Cheap eBay guitar nut files. Are they any good?

First impressions don’t inspire confidence. They seem to be made from a pretty cheap alloy and are etched with just a small number of pretty shallow teeth, spaced quite far apart. They don’t look like they'll cut terribly well.

And they don't. They need a lot of pressure and back-and-forth to make any sort of progress into my bone blank.

Worse, however, is that the sizes seem completely random. There’s no indication on my files of what size slot each side will cut and examining the cutting edges shows that some even change size along the length of a single file. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of variation in sizes at all.

Edges of cheap nut files from China. Bought on eBay and not very good.

Bearing this out, when I cut a slot with each file and found the slot widths don’t actually differ greatly. While a couple are obviously bigger than the others, most are very roughly the same.

Slots cut with Chinese nut files bought from eBay

I didn’t bother measuring the size of each slot but the one I judged to be smallest was easily able to accommodate a .026” feeler gauge to the bottom. Given that a guitar has a number of strings smaller than that, this isn’t terribly useful.

Also, weirdly, the files seemed to have a tendency to wander to the right. Chances are this is some issue on my part, probably related to how hard I had to press to get them to cut. It’s not exactly the deal-breaker on an otherwise dreadful experience. 😉

So, to sum up here, these are cheap, poorly made tools. The one thing you rely on a nut file for — cutting properly gauged slots — is impossible with these. You'll be hard-pressed to cut any slot, to be honest.

You'll find these things all over eBay for around the ten to twenty bucks range. Most are direct from China, with free postage. My advice is to avoid them. Steer well clear. Eschew and shun them. These things are awful.

Even the welding nozzle cleaners were better, and they weren’t very good.

Let’s face it: It’s not really a surprise that these were awful. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Decent, gauged nut files for the cost of a fancy-pants coffee or two was always a tall order.

Please don’t buy these things.

Just, don't.

I don’t often do reviews. If there’s a next time, I’d like to be able to tell you about something that was actually good.

Fingers crossed.