brass or bone for nut and bridge

[SOB H.R.MC]

I have a Ibanez AEB-10 and I dont like the action and I want to replace the plastic nut and bridge any suggestions?

[Meatrus]

Not sure about the bridge, but you should be able to find a brass or bone nut on Ebay. Measure the dimensions of the nut then check the listings for a match.

[SOB H.R.MC]

I'm planning on making them myself

[Meatrus]

Originally Posted by SOB H.R.MC

I'm planning on making them myself

Sorry I must have misunderstood....what did you ask "any suggestions" about then? I guessed you meant the brand/where to buy.

I tried making a bone one from scratch, I got it to fit fine, but it always felt spongy, so I bought a new ready made one .

[walterw]

fixing the action and replacing the nut and saddle are two different things.

if they're both too tall, you file down the nut slots and sand down the bottom of the saddle.

if you want a slight tonal improvement, then yes, bone will be harder and better than the stock plastic. stewmac is a good place to get bone blanks.

[JTE]

The material the nut is made of has no bearing at all on the sound of fretted notes. It's out of the equation totally. Now if you want your open notes to sound more like fretted ones, brass might be better, but it's pretty infintesimal. Me, I like open strings to sound differnt and bone (or bone-like synthetics) work fine for me. Especially on electric instruments. I have bone saddles and nuts on my two acoustic guitars because I like how they sound (especially considering how I like open strings ringing while I change chords).

Bridges? It's a crap-shoot because there's a ton of other variables in what all goes into the sound we get when we play an electric instrument. I will say, that having managed a guitar store in the '80s when the whole "brass is better" craze started, peaked, and died off, it's not that big a deal. I took a lot of money from people to put brass nuts on lots of guitars and basses. Most of the perceived "improvements" were just because they finally had an instrument with a properly cut nut.

The nut is a critical factor in an instrument playing well and in tune over the whole neck. And most nuts are cut awfully poorly. See, it's labor intensive to cut a nut correclty, and if you make one pass of the file too many it's ruined and you have to start over. So they tend to leave them too high (not to mention having sloppy angles to the tuning machines, and not enough break away). I think most of what people thought was due to the new nut being brass was really due to the new nut being right.

John

[Benjamin Strange]

If you don't like the action, you need a setup, not necessarily a new nut and saddle.

A new nut and saddle made out of bone, Tusq, or Corian can improve the tone (and sometimes intonation) if carved and installed correctly. A nut is not something you can just buy off the shelf. It's a time consuming process, and not something that you'll get perfect the first try. But it's worth doing - the tone improvement over plastic is pretty significant.

[ByF]

I put a bone nut and saddle in my Michael Kelly AEB. If I was going to do it again I would probably use Tusq, because it's more uniform in density and somewhat easier to work with. And as I said in another thread recently, when you file on bone, it smells like when a dentist is drilling your tooth.

Ed

[SOB H.R.MC]

If dense material is better would cemented carbide or hardend tool steel work?

[dmusic148]

Originally Posted by SOB H.R.MC

If dense material is better would cemented carbide or hardend tool steel work?

Sure, if you have a EDM machine.
I've made nuts out of brass, fret material, wood, corian, delrin, and have used Graphtech blanks. I honestly can't hear any difference, even on open strings, except when I really wanted to.
I will say that metal ones are fussier about dimensions and angles- get it wrong and it's a PITA to keep it tune.