Brass nut versus bone nut

V-Palm

V-Palm

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Jun 1, 2015
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#1
I've been thinking about changing the nut on my KSD from this little graphite composite thing to a different one. All my other basses have bone nuts, but I've heard a great deal about brass nuts. Does anyone own a bass with a brass nut? What is the difference in tone? Is the feel different? I also hear brass nuts last longer. Any thoughts?
 
#2
V-Palm said:
I've been thinking about changing the nut on my KSD from this little graphite composite thing to a different one. All my other basses have bone nuts, but I've heard a great deal about brass nuts. Does anyone own a bass with a brass nut? What is the difference in tone? Is the feel different? I also hear brass nuts last longer. Any thoughts?
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Sit back and watch the responses.

I say this....
Once a note is fretted, the nut is no longer in the equation.

Have fun!
 
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#3
I have a brass nut on my fretless (it came with one).
The benefits are they are unlikely to break or chip compared to bone/plastic, they look good when highly polished and they are very hard-wearing, although in 25+ years I've never worn down a bone nut although I have chipped one. On the downside, they look crap when heavily tarnished.
IME, as far as tone is concerned, once you are fingering/fretting a note it makes no difference (flameproof jacket, please!). My open strings and open-string harmonics sustain forever, but I can't say that is because of the nut as I have nothing to compare it with.

EDIT: To the OP - My advice - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
 
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#4
Gosh there have been a lot of queries concerning brass nuts lately. I thought we got over that fad a couple of decades ago- guess not.

There are quite a few players that say brass is a tone sucker. But then all brass is not alike. The composition and hardness of brass varies a LOT. So to call down brass as a nut (or saddle or bridge) material is pointless.

I will put in a brass nut if a customer insists, but I don't recommend it, simply because I really like bone for it's organic aesthetic and see very little benefit for brass. And fitting a brass nut is s significantly more costly option in my shop because of the additional time and effort it takes.
 
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#6
I have a factory brass nut on my Spector NS-2. It might make a slight difference in terms of sustain on open strings, but as has been pointed out, once you fret a string, the nut becomes irrelevant. Basically, I think the brass nut is a relic of the 70s, when we believed if something was heavier, it just had to sound better.
 
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#8
I have a brass nut on an 8 string, just because it is stronger in the tiny space between the pairs of strings. Plastic has a tendency to break when cutting slots that close together.

The only down side in my experience is having to spend more time lubing the slots. I've found that it tends to stick more than other materials.
 
#11
After breaking 2 plastic nuts on my old J Plus my repair guy made me up a brass nut. That was back in the early 90's and so far it's still doing just fine. Never had any problems with breaking a nut on any other bass so I don't know if it's the slimmer than usual neck or what, but I broke the stock one a few weeks after I got it and then broke the replacement a few weeks later, both in the same spot, the bottom of the G slot. Both times it split right there and the outside part fell away somewhere. Brass was the answer to that problem.
 
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#12
fhm555 said:
After breaking 2 plastic nuts on my old J Plus
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why would they break, and how did you break two?

unless you're using strings that are too big for the slots, that shouldn't happen at all. (if they are, the fix is of course to widen the slots accordingly.)
 
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#13
walterw said:
why would they break, and how did you break two?

unless you're using strings that are too big for the slots, that shouldn't happen at all. (if they are, the fix is of course to widen the slots accordingly.)
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No idea why they both broke like that. I got the thing brand new so the first one could have needed some touch up, but the second one? I have no idea what happened there. The guy who made it made the brass nut and he was as good a luthier and repair guy as I've ever known.
 
#16
The cheap plastic nut on my '76 Precision just cracked into three pieces one day. Had a luthier custom fabricate and install a stainless steel nut. That was in 1985. Still going strong 30 years later. :thumbsup:

My 2012 American Standard Jazz came stock with what Fender calls 'synthetic bone'. I like it just fine, and unless it should break it will stay, as I can hear no reason to change it. :bassist:
 
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#17
Exactly. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That said, the ease and relative lesser expense of the traditional bone far outweighs everything else for most applications, if the player does have to fix something.
 
#18
walterw said:
why would they break, and how did you break two?
unless you're using strings that are too big for the slots, that shouldn't happen at all.
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I've seen plastic nuts break from too much sideways pressure on instruments where the path to the tuner from the nut was at an angle.
The last one was a guy who wound his E string on the wrong way around.
Plastic can also get more brittle over time, with exposure to light, heat, smoke, etc.
 
#20
lz4005 said:
I've seen plastic nuts break from too much sideways pressure on instruments where the path to the tuner from the nut was at an angle.
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If that ever happens, I have a solution: a few months ago, our guitar player's Am Std Strat nut broke. Just broke. Fractured at the D string straight down, and what little sideways pull there is on a Strat headstock was rendering the guitar unplayable. The nut had been pressure fit - no glue. So... at the next band break between sets, I took my Hamilton capo, realigned the nut and strings, held it in place, tuned it up, clamped the capo on top of the nut, which put enough downward pressure on it to hold it in place, but not so far forward it interfered with the open strings, and it got him through the gig until we got home and the local luthier could install a new nut in for him.
 
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