yeah. i'm not going to get a good result by popping a precut nut into this thing, it's going to mess with the string spacing. i mean, that might be beneficial or might be negative but the key is that it's not the way the guitar was designed.

i'll head down there some time during the week and see if they either have the part or if i can order it from them (i apparently can't order from epiphone).

if i can't, and it's still bugging me, i'll actually pay for somebody to shape a blank nut. i have some extra cash this month and that's money well spent...

for now, i actually think i can probably bang this out alright.

worst case, i'll have to sit there with the old nut and try and sand the new one down to emulate it, but i'm not particularly confident that it's even possible given the spacing.