Ibanez "ivorex Ii" Nut & Saddle Material

[ryema22]

My brother just bought an Ibanez acoustic. It sounds nice and it seems like a pretty good guitar for the price with some nice features (solid woods, Grover tuners, Fishman electronics) but the nut, saddle, and bridge pins are all hard plastic. Ibanez claims this "Ivorex II" material is harder/more durable than bone.

Has anyone had experience with this material to comment and/or replaced it with bone or ivory? I'm finding it hard to believe Ibanez's claims, since the stuff looks and feels just like hard grey plastic. I might replace them anyways as an excuse to practice, but I thought I'd seek out some opinions first.

[Acousticraft]

"Dont fix what aint broken". No seriously if the guitar sounds good why risk damge to change them. The ivorex material may be similar to "Tusq" a plastic type material that is acoustically alive.

[fryovanni]

I agree, If it sounds good and plays good. Why make a change? You have what you want already.

[Mattia]

On the other hand...it's a nut and a saddle, both easily removed, easily made, easly put back if you don't like the sound of bone.

Overall, bone tends to be an improvement over pretty much any synthetic, including Tusq, etc. Ivory is absurdly overpriced, IMO, so don't even bother.

[ryema22]

I should have phrased the question a little bit differently.

I don't have any problem with how the guitar sounds as-is, I was mostly curious as to whether changing to bone would produce enough of a noticeable difference to be worth the effort. I was also curious to see if anyone had enough experience with the material to make some general comments on its qualities relative to the more traditional nut and saddle materials. Like Mattia said, I can always replace the old ones in the end. Anyways, I think I'm going to look for that tutorial that was up the other week about processing your own blanks from cow bone and do a little experimentation.