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i've read that bone or ivory bridge and bridge pins can improve the sound of my guitar, especially from what i've read, the sustain.

what do you know about this? is it true? have you "boned" (or "ivoried" or whatever) your guitar?

my guitar has an under-bridge pickup - i understand that might drive the specific material chosen for the bridge...

also, if i choose to do this, should i go mail order and try to do it myself or have a local repair shop do this - specifically shaping the new bridge....

also, i noticed that the nut is plastic, too. should i replace that, too? it seems more difficult to replace, but seems intuitively to contribute just as much if not more to the sound/sustain than the bridge/bridge pins.

is all this "touchy" work? could i possibly skrew up my guitar if i do this? i don't wanna go spend $$ just to make the thing sound worse...

also, any idea how much all that would cost?

thanks in advance

rd

Rd,

I replaced the plastic saddle and bridge pins on my Yamaha Dreadnaught with tusq, which is harder and denser and acoustically similar to bone apparently. I did it myself. It was straight forward. It just involved a lot of sanding and restringing to get the height just right. I really believe it improved the sound, which is now richer, more complex and clearer/louder I think. I did it because I wanted to raise the action slightly. But, obviously got the benefits of improved sound too.

The best piece of advice that I got at the time (from Wiley I think) was to use a capo at the nut after looseing the strings enough to keep the strings in place, but allow the pins to be pulled. It worked like a dream and made it much easier.

I have a bone nut and saddle on my Larrivee and ebony pins. These were installed by a previous owner. Unfortunately, when they removed the old nut they cracked the neck, because they chiseled the nut off incorrectly. It's a hairline crack, but I'm told that it will open at some stage. So if you're thinking about replacing the nut, my advice is to get a professional to do it.

I don't know what it sounded like before, tusq comes as standard. But it sounds great now.

Have fun.

Michele

Rd
Boning your guitar may be illegal in some states... check out state laws first!

RD? Roger Daltry?

neverfoundthetime wrote:

Rd
Boning your guitar may be illegal in some states... check out state laws first!

RD? Roger Daltry?

Oooh, My Goodness! Chris, you are bad man! (Nonetheless, a very funny one!)

Cori

I have been considering this but just haven't gotten around to it yet. I will be watching this thread with great interest to see what evervone thinks.

Dave

The vibration of the strings is transmitted to the body of the guitar through the nut and saddle.
If you take a plastic, tusq, and bone version of each of these you will find that the bone has the highest density and gives the best transmission. I had mine replaced with bone. I listened to all three before making my decision.

Plastic has a flat response across the whole spectrum of sound.
Tusq has substantially more response on the higher and lower frequencies but flat in the middle range.
Bone gives a more improved response across the whole range.

If you drop each of them on a hard surface table, you can hear the difference.

Needless to say, I went with the bone. My luthier hand carved the nut and saddle to fit my guitar.

Bridge pins can help, but not so much. They really don't transmit much of the sound.

Rd- I've had bone, ivory and Tusq and for all the hoopla Tusq works great and is a fraction of the price of the others. Any sonic improvement I noticed was so minimal that it wasn't worth the effort.

My advice is unless you are a touring professional with a very keen ear stick with Tusq and use good strings! :cheer:

BigBear wrote:

Rd- I've had bone, ivory and Tusq and for all the hoopla Tusq works great and is a fraction of the price of the others. Any sonic improvement I noticed was so minimal that it wasn't worth the effort.

My advice is unless you are a touring professional with a very keen ear stick with Tusq and use good strings! :cheer:

Now this is the kind of info I like ,Bigbear you and Michele have just saved me a lot of mucking around thanks for that and thanks to you rd for a good question.
Cheers
Scott

I just hope no one would seriously consider ivory as an ok material to use 0n a guitar.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4287548.stm

How about whale bone then? Only for scientific purposes of course ? you for the better of music?