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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2020 17:22:30 GMT
To be honest I don’t give it a second thought. Am usually more focussed on sound! And that is the important thing. I've heard other players pick up any old guitar and make them sound good regardless of whatever the nuts and saddles are made of. I think it's so easy to get distracted by details thinking that spending on this or that will make me sound better, I've often been guilty of it and not just with guitars. I took up photography a few years ago and got sucked into constantly wanting better gear until I quickly realised that my hobby was no longer photography, it was shopping. Same with HiFi, I had to replace my amp last year and found that most of the time I was listening to the equipment and not the music. Most of the time now I tend to be pretty happy with (and grateful for) what I've got. It's certainly possible to get lost in gear but there's also value in improving things. Otherwise we'd all still be playing the guitars we started learning on, which would be made by shaping windfall trees with flints and strung with the intestines of goats and sheep.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2020 21:20:21 GMT
To be honest I don’t give it a second thought. Am usually more focussed on sound! And that is the important thing. I've heard other players pick up any old guitar and make them sound good regardless of whatever the nuts and saddles are made of. I think it's so easy to get distracted by details thinking that spending on this or that will make me sound better, I've often been guilty of it and not just with guitars. I took up photography a few years ago and got sucked into constantly wanting better gear until I quickly realised that my hobby was no longer photography, it was shopping. Same with HiFi, I had to replace my amp last year and found that most of the time I was listening to the equipment and not the music. Most of the time now I tend to be pretty happy with (and grateful for) what I've got. You guys are playing guitars that cost thousands of pounds. Is it any wonder you don't feel the need to upgrade the nut or saddle? I'm talking about a £329 instrument with laminate back and sides that'll almost certainly benefit if a few parts are upgraded.
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Aug 13, 2020 22:47:10 GMT
You guys are playing guitars that cost thousands of pounds. Is it any wonder you don't feel the need to upgrade the nut or saddle? I'm talking about a £329 instrument with laminate back and sides that'll almost certainly benefit if a few parts are upgraded. I scraped together the money for my first expensive guitar over a long period of time by picking up extremely cheap ones (£50 or less at the time) and making improvements to the set up and other issues (and usually put new saddles/nuts in) before selling them on for a small profit. So yes, I agree that it is worth doing such improvements - the improvement in sound may be huge, negligible, or just different but it is a useful learning experience in guitar fettling if nothing else. Keith
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Post by stringdriventhing on Aug 14, 2020 8:56:23 GMT
One thing I've noticed with Tusq is that the colour gradually changes to brownish/yellow over time. Doesn't bother me at all, but it might be a cosmetic issue for some. I've never swapped out the nuts/saddles on any of the guitars I've owned as I've been happy enough with how they sounded. Does a bone nut/saddle make a huge difference? I imagine it would depend a bit on the guitar.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2020 10:18:36 GMT
I think it also depends on the bone. TUSQ, new bone, Urea and other man-made materials (don't some people use brass? - I know you can get brass bridge pins) all tend to be very consistent in density while bone can vary from one end to the other, even in something as small as a nut or a saddle. But a less expensive guitar will use less expensive (and usually lower quality) material than a more expensive one.
Yamah use urea on their less expensive classical guitars and bone on the pricey ones (you can pay £10k+ for a top of the line Yamaha classical guitar). I can't immediately find out what they use on their top of the range steel strings.
As you say, it differs from one guitar to another. Sometimes you might get a change in tone that is neither better or worse, sometimes you might get more volume with little or no change in the timbre, sometimes you might get less, or less vibration. It probably also depends on who is fitting it and how well it is done. But as a general rule I think that if you use higher quality components, as long a you fit them properly you are likely to improve the quality of the sound.
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Post by stringdriventhing on Aug 14, 2020 13:18:45 GMT
I've just been having a look at my guitars 'cos I admit I wasn't 100% sure what the nuts/saddles were made of. I seem to have 2 with Tusq Nut & Saddle, 1 with a Corian Nut & Tusq Saddle and one with a bone nut and no saddle (resonator). Years ago I was considering some upgrades to one of my guitars, but I never got round to it. It's now getting to be in need of some new frets, so I might look at getting a bone nut and saddle done at the same time. Might put some better tuners on too. Going off on a tangent a bit, I've often wondered where they get all these fossilised mammoths and walruses from Could be a nice little earner that if you knew where to find them.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2020 14:21:18 GMT
Been wondering this myself. I've only done a cursory search but I've not found any.
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Post by stringdriventhing on Oct 19, 2020 15:03:01 GMT
So I finally got round to getting a bone nut and saddle put on my Martin 000-15s (previously corian nut and tusq saddle). First impressions are that that it's maybe made the guitar a little brighter, but hard to say for sure because it has new strings on it. It looks nicer anyway... the tusq saddle had gone yellowish-brown in colour.
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