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Location: SoCal | Kim Keller (a great guy who I am nickle and diming to death with freebies), sent me two nuts for a Preacher Deluxe neck that I am buying from Miles (Mr. Ovation) to put on my Viper body. Does anybody know the pros and cons of a brass nut?
If anybody is interested, I'll post the results of the neck switch when done. |
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Location: NJ | Well the viper was made in the guitar brass age the seventies. That is why you have that huge brass bridge. It was thought that the more brass you had on the guitar the more sustain. Well I guess it sort of works but you also get a thinner sound in my opinion. I have seen brass nuts on almost any kind of guitar including martins. There were also companies that made brass replacement saddles for acoustic guitars.
Just a side note when the brass age came in was when many of the parts companies came into being. It started an era of 'Hot rodding" your guitar. Mighty mite, chandler and schecter all come immediately to mind. the brass thing got so bad that they even made brass pickgaurds and neck plates. I sincerly doubt that these had any role in changing the sound |
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Location: SoCal | I don't know about that last Al. Last night I put gold strap buttons that Kim sent me on Big Blue (Adamas 12) and was trying to explain to my daughter that not only did it look better, but it sounded better. She didn't bite. But hey, she's only ten. What does she know?
Answer: Lots! Thank god she takes after her mother and not me.
[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: moodypi ] |
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Location: Scotland | Paul, Brass has a few advantages in that it's cheap & easy to work as it's pretty soft (which also means it can wear out pretty fast) The only sonic advantage is that it evens up the tone between fretted & open strings, but that's pretty subtle. Once a string is fretted anything the nut may be contributing tonally is out of the equation. Brass nuts are a throwback to that 70's cover everything in heavy brass hardware for extra sustain fad. God only knows why, the best sustaining & sounding guitars I've ever played have been light as a feather. There's a theory that heavy tonewoods & hardware actually kill vibration rather than contributing to it. There's nothing wrong with a nicely cut brass nut but I prefer bone, fossil Ivory or some of the synthetic equivalents.
Paul
[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: NJ | So what's the supposed principal behind these "mini C-clamp" thingies that I've seen at the counter in guitar shops that clamp onto the headstock (I think they're called "Fat Fingers")?
Are they "supposed" to add some kind of "brass-like resonance" through the headstock/neck/body?
Or is it just some flagging plumbing supply company "diversifying"? |
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Location: Scotland | No, they're just another gimmick with which they can fleece gullible guitarists, not that I'm cynical at all. Guitars produce perfectly good sounds without such additions, & while a difference may be perceptible in isolation, once you play the thing through an amp and a couple of pedals, at volume with a ryhthm section, it just becomes irrellevant.
Paul
[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | In side by side tests I've done, I noticed a little better sustain with the brass nuts even on fretted notes. On my Viper I actually have an aluminum nut which I made many years ago, and I like it the most, but it does not cause as much sustain as the brass. This is just my personal experience, and by no means were the tests "lab" equivelent... but I do like the metal nuts more than plastic. |
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Location: NJ | Back in the day, I was playing in some college coffeehouses... I would occasionally jam with this guy that was headed to law school. He was from a rather well to do family and he thought he was the reincarnated Dan Fogelberg and Jackson Browne. Well he had a good voice and played guitar fairly but somehow the combination of he and I perfoming together was dare I say "magic". There was one problem...we could barely stand each other's personalities. He was very type "A" always in command and I was a more "go with the flow" type.
After a few meetings and jams we decided to form some sort of folk rock thing ala the eagles, flying burrito brothers. byrds etc. He hooked up with this HOT bimbo that had the voice of an angel wrote great tunes but was not a good guitarist. I would play lead richierich would play rhythm and sing harmony with angel....
Well we had our first jam. That day richierich decided to put a brass nut on his acoustic guitar. I have no clue why but he decided it would make his guitar sound louder. So when I got to rehearsal the deed was already done. BUT what he did was attach the nut 1/4 inch from the end of the fingerboard. No matter where idiot played on the guitar it was out of tune. Well we tried to do some songs but it was like nails on a chalkboard. Angel sounded great and played a 12 string I did leads and richie rich made the most god awful noise on his perpetually out of tune acoustic. I begged him to play another guitar. Words got heated really bad, Angel was not amused, bu this was rather normal for us playing together.
Needless to say I slammed my martin d 35 back in the case muttered some of the most choice swear words I could think of and went home....Angel decided she would not sing with us and richierich went on to law school to represent Indian reservations or saved the whales or something like that. Me, I just kept playing guitar.
another nightmare from my life.... |
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Location: Jacksonville, Florida | Concerning nuts, would it be a reasonable to asssume that to convert an Ovation guitar from a right hand to a left hand player, a new nut is all you need (non-cutaway body). If this is true, how difficult is it to remove the original nut? |
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Location: Scotland | You also have to consider the bridge. On an Ovation electro with the original wide pickup unit you could drill a hole for the cable at the opposite end of the saddle-slot & flip the pickup around. That should then intonate the strings correctly for left-handed. You may be able to remove just the saddle part & reverse that. It's a little more tricky with acoustic-only guitars or those with the thinline or tru-balance pickups. The saddle-slot would need to be filled & re-routed for left-handed. This is a job for a competent tech. You could use a righty as a lefty without doing this but the intonation will be very suspect as you played further up the neck.
The other consideration is the bracing pattern, symetrical bracing such as the Ovation A isn't a problem but bracing patterns such as a standard x-brace have different braces on the bass & treble side.
Paul |
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Location: Jacksonville, Florida | Thanks Paul, after more thought I realized that the preamp controls would now be on the bottom of the guitar, also the top strap button would be below the neck... |
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Location: NJ | It's a lot easier to just play in front of the mirror. |
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Brass Nut
