I have put a wee drop of super glue on at both ends the bottom part of nut that rests on the fret board.
After I attached the nut I strung the bouzouki with new strings. I played a few chords and all I had to do with the nut then was to sand little bit at both ends so it was level with the fret board.
I am very happy with this nut, It is first class job. I have had no problem with the nut.
Rob Sharer wrote:Placing a shim of softer material, i.e. credit card plastic, between the nut and the neck can definitely affect the tone. Softer material will absorb vibrations in exactly the place where you don't want this happening.
That's really interesting, Rob. I didn't
know that vibrations at the nut end
were important to the sound. I thought
all the business of sound production was
going on at the bridge. That explains why
bone nuts are desireable... I was just
wondering about that
Yeah, I'm curious, too. The bridge/saddle end makes sense. In keeping up with the seasonal humidity variations here, for my guitar I have different bone and Micarta saddles, unshimmed and shimmed with plastic or various soft and hard wood slips. And I can hear the differences. I tried ebony bridge pins instead of the stock Martin plastic pins, and couldn't stand the treble overtones.
I'd think the nut contributes much less to the tone, though it probably affects sustain. As soon as you capo up, the nut is mostly out of the loop, and the strings behind the capo are effectively damped by the capo rubber. Yet the tone doesn't change significantly. The head of the instrument definitely vibrates, but a lot of that is coming through the neck, and not through the nut. So I'd think that as long as the nut is seated solidly enough not to kill your sustain, you're OK.
My Gibson ES-347 has the factory original brass nut, which is supposed to increase sustain, and brighten what is considered by some a slightly darker tone than the ES-335. But electrics are played mostly un-capoed, and people who have a bone nut report no real difference in tone.
I too would like to hear a reasonable explanation of how different nut materials change the tone of stopped and capo-ed strings on an instrument. There seems to be little logic in it, yet it is something touted by players and luthiers alike. Whenever I've pressed for an in-depth answer, all I get are comments like "Everything we do effects tone" and "It's all part of the equation". No one to date has given me a good reason why nut materials would affect anything but the sound of open strings. I've tried various nut materials and could never hear any difference at all. The materials have other useful characteristics, of course, but I just can't understand the tone change claims.
Okay, let's take an extreme example. Imagine a nut made of styrofoam. Forgetting for the moment that the string would cut right through, what do you reckon that would sound like? The lack of density of the nut material would mean that the strings' vibrations would be absorbed by the nut, giving a muffled, muted sound. Bone, to choose the standard nut material, has a very different sound from styrofoam (I believe we can be reasonably certain of this despite the lack of experimental data) because its density prevents the strings' energy from being robbed by the damping effect that a softer material would have. I believe that's the best way to look at it: you don't want the nut to take any of the strings' energy as they're vibrating. By logical extension, the best nut material would be diamond.
Alas, it's not this simple. We, as players, are listening for something pleasing, not a scientific optimum. A softer nut might actually sound better on a guitar given to glassy or brittle tone. Bone may sound best to some because that's what they are expecting to hear. It's kind of like the scientific guitar designs of the 70s and 80s; mathematically, they may have been an improvement over a D-28, but what have players continued to choose? As for nut material, I tend to go for bone because it's a good combination of hardness, workability (including the ability to be polished to a high shine, for both aesthetics and friction reduction), and sound. Even so, bone is itself a variable commodity, so I take care in material selection for each application.
Anything which comes into contact with the vibrating length of the string is going to have an effect on the tone produced. Few would argue that a bone saddle is no improvement over a plastic one. Likewise, harder frets have a definite impact on tone, with stainless steel being the brightest (don't even get me started on poorly-crowned frets!). Going to the next level, wood selection has an impact on the sound of an instrument as well, especially for the top. Sitka just sounds different from cedar, no denying it. I'd say that neck wood selection is very important as well; holding dimensions equal, a stiffer neck wood will produce more sustain for the simple reason of not robbing string energy by wobbling. Some speak of this in terms of the neck transferring vibration to the body, but the point is the same: it's all involved in tone production. If the neck is involved, then the nut, which couples the strings to the neck, is certainly involved. Cheers,
Rob, thank you for that in-depth and patient answer. I can see why the nut material would influence the tone of an open string. Are you saying that the objective in choosing the nut material is to provide the the same characteristic of the open string to a stopped string? That is, so that the strings will have the same tone whether open or fretted? So that the nut and fret materials affect the tone in the same way? That would make sense. One would not want the open strings to have a distinctly different tone.
If that is the case, then changing the nut material does not change the overall response of the instrument, but rather 'equalizes' that response so that all the notes have the same character.
This is an interesting side-issue, the open-vs.-fretted sound. That's an argument against a really hard nut material, wanting the open note to sound as much like the fretted note as possible. If that's the most important thing, then the answer is a zero fret, which I'm certainly in favor of in the right circumstance. If I ever get back around to building some bouzoukis myself, they will more than likely feature a zero fret. In my own playing, on acoustic guitar at least, I tend to like a very ringing open-string sound, so it's bone for me.
Another interesting data point, if you will, is the fact that many solo jazz artists use an over-the-nut string mute to stop any open strings from ringing. Does it then not matter at all what the nut material is? Of course, jazz guys generally want a very dark tone so maybe the point is "mute."
This whole topic is very complex. Anybody ever see those brass plates made to be bolted to the back of a guitar's peghead? The idea was to increase the mass of the peghead and therefore, if you buy the conclusion, the sustain of the instrument. Would a heavier nut contribute to overall sustain? Meanwhile, the trend these days favors lighter-weight electric guitars. In the 70s/80s, guys were inlaying brass into the tops of their Les Pauls...who is/was right? Violins have ebony nuts, so why not guitars? I remember hearing an old small-bodied Martin with an ebony nut that sounded great. I also have a friend who is a scorching fiddler, who has a bone nut on her axe. Lots to think about...
