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Brass nut yes or no

#22
I bought a brass nut for my upcoming bass build, since I had the choice. I put one on my old Ric 4001 not long after I bought it, seemed to make the bass subtly brighter and more sustain, but that could have been wish fulfillment on my part. I like how they look, maybe that's reason enough. I suppose the downside is that if you file the nut too deep there's no putting it back with the crazy glue and baking soda trick. I wonder if you could mix up a paste of brass filings and epoxy.......?
 
#26
Correct me if I am wrong. The material and mass, and even the design (nut vs zero-fret) of the nut could make a difference on only four (five, six ..) open notes.

Granted, open B, E, and drop D, and even open A do get a lot of play. For any fretted note, I cannot see that it would make a difference any more than the material the string tree and machine heads are made of, would. I can see how a brass nut might improve open note harmonics though.
 
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#29
jeff ward said:
Do u use passive basses?
Unless your playing acoustic basses or fully passive basses your not getting much use from the tone woods in your bass. Once that active preamp colors your sound it takes away a lot of your natural tone and gives u that EMG, aguilar, or what ever preamps tone your using.
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I've been thumping on a standard Jazz lately. The only active stuff I like is Alembic. The rest of the active systems out there(that I know of) kind of give a Casio keyboard tone effect that I can't stand.
 
#31
There's a nickel-silver nut on my Yamaha (standard equipment) that is made of the same material as the frets. Yamaha claims that it results in "the same sound quality and feeling even when open notes are played". An MTD Kingston I had years ago achieved that with the infamous "zero fret".
 
#35
OldDirtyBassist said:
If PRS really wants to get his point across, he should do a before and after vid with the different nut materials.

These "please, for the love of God, buy my guitar brand" videos these luthiers are putting out are just sad. PRS seems stressed out here for sure.
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I have two Music Man Sabres. The '79 has a stock nut. The '80 has a brass nut. They wear the same strings. The '80 has better sustain and (imho) clearer, bell like tone, particularly with open strings.
 

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