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Nut Material And Bridges

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8/18/2005 10:15 PM

Nut Material And Bridges

I've got three previous replies I've posted concerning bridges.
I get pissed and rave like a lunatic. . Sorry but its frustrating as hell to have a supposedly experienced guitar player sit there and argue that his vibrato bridge makes as much tone or sustains as long as a string through. Theres no way possible
that this is gonna happen . It seems that after 20 or more years of polishing a guitar your eyes would pass over the bridge,a light would come on and you'd really see it . If you like gimmicks then more power to ya but dont try to argue your nonsense with me . It gets my bowels in a bind. Its the same type of genius who'll argue how nut material doesnt matter unless you're playing an open note. I'm not nice so its understandable if no one wants to hear my take on nut material. If just one person does then post it and I'll have my say....you can have yours and then I'll leave ya'll in peace. If one person gets something from it then its worth the bound bowels.

Know what I mean chillun?

8/19/2005 1:52 AM

Adams said:

Sorry but its frustrating as hell to have a supposedly experienced guitar player sit there and argue that his vibrato bridge makes as much tone or sustains as long as a string through.

    So why not add string gauge to your list of pet peeves? Heavier gauge strings will sustain longer than super slinkies.

    I went to a guitar clinic put on by Michael Angelo a few years ago and he said that with modern high gain amps sustain is really not an issue anymore so you can use 009's and still have sustain for days.

    The same goes for bridges and nuts... with a modern amp you can dial in as much gain and sustain as you want, even with a bridge with a whammy bar.

    As for tone, in modern music most of that comes from the electronics more than the guitar itself. Plug any guitar into a Dual Rectifier and crank up the Red channel... they all sound the same to me!

I personally don't like bridges with whammy bars (make that a palm lever and I'm there!

) but there are a lot of players who do... some of the younger ones might have no idea how to play WITHOUT a whammy bar. With their rig they get all of the tone and sustain that they want. Let them put a little English on whammy bar and the note could sustain forever.

With a vintage 6 screw strat bridge you can tighten down the springs to pull the trem block against the body; with yer tremelo blocked you are going to get most of the tone and sustain of a hardtail.

What bugs me about most (unblocked) trem bridges is that whenever you bend one string, the other strings go out of tune. Try sustaining an open low E while you bend strings on the top 3 strings. Ouch!

Steve Ahola

8/19/2005 8:41 AM

Listen, guys, everything is give and take. Hey, my guitar sustains better whan I took the pickups out of it so there's no magnetic field messing with the vibrations...yes, it's true, but now it's just a really bad acoustic guitar. There is no perfect electric guitar, and there is no perfect hardware, and as long as humans have ears, good tone will be a matter of opinion.

Let people use whammy bars, sustainiacs, Boogie Quintuple Rectifires, whatever. Freedom of choice is one thing I enjoy as a musician and a guitar tech. In fact, I wish I had more choices. I wish that they made more neck-through-the-body guitars. I wish I could get a guitar in ANY finish the company uses instead of "this model available in cherry only".

Oh, as far as nuts go, I like bone for acoustics and non-tremolo guitars. I like GraphTech stuff for tremolo guitars, and non-tremolo electrics, too. Brass is nice...a little bright in my opinion, but nice.

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