Nut Questions

[Bradock PI]

Thanks noodle I think I do need physics turned it to terms a guitarist understands.

If I had to give a parady there are many sports where the player can use the physics of the situation to make something happen and they have know idea how and there are many physicists who understand why the snooker ball does what it does, or the football curls or the golfball travels further but they couldn't play the shot, curl the ball or even hit the golfball. Analysis of the physics of a situation can improve the way people play by helping them further understand the effects.

The post was intended for people just to list the wheres and whys of the nuts they chose for information I am sorry we got into this debate as I am sure the effect is small in most cases and the nut I think can only be bad or good and some materials may be better for open strings but for all the other stuff it will be a combination of cut and material making a bad nut.

So Lew I am guessing that for the same reason the footballer can curl the ball you and all other experienced players would just not pick out that instrument as you would not like it when you played it so you would never own one where it made a difference.

Get out of that one !!!

[Lew]

I would if I understood what you're trying to say.

I haven't always played high end guitars though if that's what you mean? It's only been the last 5 years or so that I've been playing guitars over the 1k mark even.  I've had to curve my balls around plenty of poor nuts...? 0_o

[dheim]

am i a bit late?
anyway i have changed nuts just on two guitars... one because it was a cheap looking and feeling piece of plastic, the other because i blocked the trem and got rid of that useless locking nut, so my luthier used a graphite one...
i've got an earvana on my LTD EC1000, and i can say that it doesn't wonders. the 3rd string goes quite easily out of tune, even if i've got locking sperzels... i'm not sure if it should be supposed to keep intonation better than other nuts. if yes it's a failure!

[Bradock PI]

I just had the nut replaced on my epiphone and a full fret dress and setup and it's a lot nicer to play. I was gonna have tusq or bone but ended up with slipstone which my luthier told me is at least as good and better for bending. Stewmac seems to have discontinued slipstone.

I think the biggest difference is probably having a luthier do the nut and not just a standard robot cut nut and also perhaps the cheap nuts plastics not so good. Between the better nut materials I would guess there is not much of a margin as each can probably point to a major manufacturer using their product for premium instruments.