Brass Nuts

[m4rk0]

I am thinking of installing a brass nut on my vip and on a hardtail strat project.
I have a brass nut on an old 76 Ibanez LP and I really think they enhance the tone and sustain.

Does anybody have more info or experiences with those experimental brass nuts with adjustable screws?? Lancaster uses them, and I saw them on some other webpages, but no further info or details. any other suggestions?

Also, it seems that Brass Nuts (and hardware) is considered a bit of a 70s fashion thing in guitarworld. is there a reason for that??

 

[Superbeast520]

Hey m4rk0,
  I like the sound of a brass nut, I got one on a cheap rental guitar when I first started playing in the late 80's and loved the tone, even though at that point I had no Idea what created it. hahahahaahhahaa

I actually installed a precut brass nut on my Superbeast, but it had the wrong radius and I opted to change it out, I cut my own but went a bit too deep on one of the slots and ...well so much for that one, so now I ended up putting on the earvana, which I like but wish I had one made of brass, maybe one of these days I'll get the hankering and fashion myself one out of brass.

Im all with ya on the brass though, Hey they make Bells out of it for a reason, and thats good enough for me.  :rock-on:

I don't like the adjustable ones though, just dosn't seem to make sense to have a string vibrating under tension on the top of a movable part, seems to be counterproductive to the whole Idea of Tone enhancement.

 

[CD]

Maybe some of the reason you don't see more brass on guitars is the cost of the material and the effort needed to work it. I've never had a brass nut, but I've read its harder to file than a regular nut.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

One of the guys on another forum showed pics where he took an Earvana Compansated nut & had a brass one machined to replicate it.

It looked pretty cool, I'll see if I can find the thread & post a link.  It may have been on ProjectGuitarforum.com.

 

[CD]

I think that guy was on this forum, before the change over.

 

[Superbeast520]

That would be great!!, Thanks, I also seen the one midi rose had machined for his be all / end all guitar and it looks real sharp, but Im not sure that would work on a fender style nut like I have, I may buy a bunch of brass blanks and put it in the vise and see what I can work with the ole hack saw and some needle files and maybe if I do enough of em one will come out right ...hahahahaahah.......brass is pretty soft, thats the one plus........

 

[Midirose]

That would be great!!, Thanks, I also seen the one midi rose had machined for his be all / end all guitar and it looks real sharp, but Im not sure that would work on a fender style nut like I have, I may buy a bunch of brass blanks and put it in the vise and see what I can work with the ole hack saw and some needle files and maybe if I do enough of em one will come out right ...hahahahaahah.......brass is pretty soft, thats the one plus........

Or you could do like me, Buy a earvana nut, give it to a machinist and tell him to make a brass one for you. :laughing7:  Wow that was easy.

 

[nathan a]

My girlfriend used to have a mid-70s sigma acoustic with a brass nut. The guitar was crap, but that wasn't the nut's fault.

I was doing some fret work on it one day a few years ago so that she could sell it, and to my surprise, when I took away the strings, the nut just fell off onto the floor. It never occurred to me that a brass nut wouldn't be affixed like a tusq, etc nut. There wasn't any trace of any glue on the underside of the nut. It didn't appear to have ever been glued on.

Is this standard practice with brass nuts?

 

[Superbeast520]

Thats real funny Midi Rose....hahahaahaha   Yeah your guy did a great job, I guess I could look around town and see if I can find a shop that would do it.....but that may be too easy, as an artist part of the game is the struggle :icon_scratch:...hahahahhhahah, having to file my fingers to the bone getting the right one made has a sort of holistic appeal............hehehheehehe :laughing3:

I don't know that it would be standard practice to not glue any nut that is so loose it would fall out onto the floor, I would certainly glue a nut that loose.
At the same time, if you look at the pics of my strat, you'll see I had a brass nut on there for a while, and it was so snug right outta the box that I just tapped it down into the slot and didn't put glue on at all.  But like I said it was so snug, I was actually concerned at first when installing it, but then realized, "Hey I won't even have to glue this" so instead of sanding it to slide in I left it and just tapped it in place.
(unfortunately it had the wrong radius and that kinda bothered me, so I switched it out for the Earvana) otherwise it would have been fine without glue........Brass is soft and a bit pliabe so ?????????.........not necessarily standard practice, but in that case of mine it would have been just fine with no glue.

 

[tfarny]

My Guild acoustic has a bone nut which is not glued at all.  Just like a saddle, the string tension does all the holding you need.  Less glue is good, right?