| Title: | GUITARnotes - Where Every Note has Emotion |
| Notice: | Discussion of the finer stringed instruments |
| Moderator: | KDX200::COOPER |
| Created: | Thu Aug 14 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 3280 |
| Total number of notes: | 61432 |
I had a cheap little Fender Squire Strat that I enjoyed playing
my BTO and Raisins/Bears covers on, and then, because of too much
wang-bar, my plastic nut goes to nut heaven.
A friend of mine has an old Carvin with a Brass nut, and it sustains
for eons, but he has no whammy-bar.
People told me, and it made sense, that a brass nut will cause your
strings to catch if you have a tremolo.
So I went to Performance Guitars (the guys who make Steve Vai and
Dweezil Zappa's guitars) and had them put in a graphite nut and
re-set-up the whole thing.
It plays like a dream, the action is low (still not a Hamer, but
low), and no more fret buzz (unless you bend the high E).
The Vibrato assembly now no longer throws the guitar out of tune,
(especially the G going sharp) and I boil my strings to give added
non-stretchability. Who needs locking tremolos? Who can bear to
tune locking-nut-vibrolo-assemblies? How many other names can I
call that little arm that causes the strings to go flat?
Basically I'm saying graphite nuts and boiling strings help keep
me in tune. Amen.
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 451.1 | What did they do? | CSC32::G_HOUSE | Greg House - CSC/CS | Tue Jan 05 1988 14:46 | 10 |
> So I went to Performance Guitars (the guys who make Steve Vai and
> Dweezil Zappa's guitars) and had them put in a graphite nut and
> re-set-up the whole thing.
Any idea what they did, other than putting in and adjusting the
string height with the new nut? Specifically, I'm curious about
the tremelo not making the G string sharp. Is this just from the
lack of nut friction?
Greg - I thot the G string was SUPPOSED to be sharp...
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| 451.2 | they didn't paint it chartruse | SRFSUP::MORRIS | Curves and a screwball | Tue Jan 05 1988 22:50 | 8 |
Apparently the nut took care of everything.
They also shimmed the neck, cleaned out the pickups and all
electronics, and messed around with the trussrod and intonated.
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| 451.3 | Sustain | FPTVX1::SYSTEM | Dave Kinney, Upstate NY | Wed Jan 06 1988 13:35 | 6 |
Did the graphite produce better/as good sustain as the brass, or was
this not a consideration. Are there disadvantages to the brass or
graphite nut?
Dave.
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| 451.4 | just buy more compressors | SRFSUP::MORRIS | Curves and a screwball | Wed Jan 06 1988 21:43 | 15 |
It seems to me that the brass was better, but for a tremolo, a brass
would both catch and hack up my strings. I believe that for a fixed
tailpiece (I have done this with my bass) I would use brass, and
for a twang-bar I would go with graphite. You sacrifice some sustain
with the graphite, but since it is "slippery", it keeps the strings
in tune.
Aside: Carvin now puts graphite nuts on all of their guitars, whether
fixed or tremolo bridges.
The graphite nut also had to be hand-ground for each string retainer.
Better them than me.
Ash in smogland.
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