stainless nut

[basey]

I was thinking about milling a stainless steel nut for my bass to try and match the tone of the steel frets on open notes. Has anyone ever tried this? or heard of using steel for a nut?

[soapbarstrat]

Are your frets stainless steel, or the more common "nickel silver" ?

I've made a steel nut. I think I used galvanized steel, or however it's spelled. I used that because I figured it wouldn't rust.

It's much harder on tools, plus I don't think it sounds better than a corian nut.

But, I only made one, for a guitar, so I can't say my opinion comes from much experience. Maybe I'll make another one to get a better idea.

My bass has a black phenolic nut, which sounds good.

I tend to think that the nut material should not be the same material as the frets, or a material that's even harder, because the strings bear against the nut much harder than the strings get pressed down to the frets. A finger is quite a bit of a "tone sink", so if you want the open strings to sound like fretted strings, the nut should have a quality to it, that also causes some "tone sinking",or "tone draining", or whatever you want to call it.

Brass would be much closer to "nickel silver" frets than steel.

I don't think I like the tone so much for the open high E, on a guitar with a floyd nut.

Sometimes guitars (acoustics) have a saddle made from a material, but then the High E, B and G, might have a little insert of a different material under that string at the saddle. Maybe the same could be done for the nut.

Maybe a 2, 3, 4 piece nut. Steel for the low E, brass for the middle strings, and something like Corian for the highest string.

[rhoads56]

Before you do anything, try and cut a string slot into a scrap piece of stainless. You will soon forget about the idea altogether. I have literally melted drill bits trying to drill through thin stainless steel, so imagine how hard they will be to file.

[basey]

Stainless milling tools are not a problem for me. I work with stainless at my job all the time.

I just want to know if the tone is going to be comparable to the steel frets. In retrospect, I should've used a zero fret for the effect I want. But I really don't want to redo the fretboard now. Besides, I don't like the way the zero fret looks.

Thanks for the advice anyway. maybe I'm getting a little too ambitious for my first neck-through. I can always change it later (the nut) if I don't like the tone.

I just thought someone here might have tried it before or something.

[westhemann]

if you have the tools then by all means do it....i think it would be cool...but like rhoads said you have to have special tools that i don't have

[soapbarstrat]

Yes, every guitar is different, so you never know the whole story until you go ahead and do the experiment.

Someone on ampage was raving like hell about a year ago, about using ceramic as a nut material. They said it brought all their guitars " to life" etc. I wanted to try it and got a hold of some 1/8" thick strips of ceramic. Man, that stuff is also too damn hard on my delicate, expensive nut slotting files.

Maybe it's not a bad idea to make the nut from an easy to work with material, then use it to make a mold, to cast a copy from a harder material.

I have a friend who makes coins, so I might have him cast me some exotic nuts some day (I don't quite like the sound of that).

I already would like him to make a cast of a fret, and melt down all my pulled frets to make new ones.