Brass nut?

[gwEm]

What will a brass nut do for my tone? Can I fit it myself?

Thanks, G

[Kiichi]

I would think it is as easy/hard to fit as any other nut. So if you can do that....

Tonewise I only have my experience from brass bridge pins on my acoustic bass to go with. There the switch from plastic to brass made the sound warmer, more rounded, all around more balanced, and more bell like. It did however also reduce acoustic volume, perhaps just percieved so due to the slightly reduced high end.

[Dave Sloven]

Brass is also quite heavy.  If it is a light guitar I would say DON'T ...

I had a brass nut on a BC Rich Warlock bass back in '91 but I can't remember what difference it made ... it was replacing a broken nut rather than an attempt to add tone ... I remember it looking kind of ugly

I use Graph Tech TUSQ XL for replacement nuts now.  Both my SG Junior and my Squier Jazz have them

[38thBeatle]

I don't think a brass nut would make a huge difference. Surely it would only be open strings that would be affected, apart from a fairly small effect upon the overall guitar tone and I would expect there to be sufficient mass of brass to make that much of a difference.
I have some experience of this as I have a brass nut on my old P Bass . It was my Brother's idea that I went along with but I've never noticed any improvement or indeed a lot of difference.

[AndyR]

I had some of the original Westone guitars in the early 80s - they all had brass nuts. In fact, everything seemed to be brass in those days!!

If it did have any effect, surely it can only be on open strings? And it gets to look pretty manky pretty quickly...

[MrBump]

I think that Gordon Smith guitars all come with brass nuts, don't they?  I remember loads of chat about how they impact tone and sustain back in the day.  I've never used one, but I know what you mean gwEm, would be harder to work with the slots, height etc.

[Dave Sloven]

The brass nut has pretty much gone the way of the zero fret and the scalloped fretboard.

For most people they died out with the mullet hairstyle ... seemed to be an '80s thing.  You can find old footage of Tony Iommi with any of these!

[blue]

unless you look at Gibson's 2015 catalogue, where the brass nut and zero fret both feature strongly,  for some strange reason best known to Gibson.

[Dave Sloven]

They'll probably have promo videos of guys in Gold's Gym vests and happy pants playing them

[gwEm]

thanks alot for the replies gents

they caught my eye browsing on eBay and did some googling the other day, some people think it makes the tone brighter, some think it makes it warmer. some people say it affects the open strings only (makes sense to me) and some say it adds 'something' to all the strings.

if it would warm up a bright strat a bit, adding sustain and looking cool in a retro 1980s way, then i would be tempted to have a go with one.

i have a Gordon Smith with a brass nut fitted in fact and i dont mind the patina it gets, but i've never done an A-B test with and without the brass.

gathering all the information i suppose, overall, that the effect of it is quite a subtle one