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Posted

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?

Posted

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.

Posted

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.

Posted

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. B) 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. :D

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

Posted

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.

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