crusty philtrum
Vintageologist
Re: Talk to me about Graph Tech
^ ^ Wot he said.
In my experience with Graph Tech nuts and saddles, they steal tone. They do solve some problems re. tuning and string breakage, but at a heavy cost. I avoid this material at all times.
Tusq is a great product, not at all like the black stuff, and is great on acoustic guitars. It is a vast tonal improvement over the plastic nuts and saddles found on many guitars. I have even seen Tusq saddle sets for TOM bridges.
As was mentioned above, if you're playing with a lot of gain, the Graph-Tech losses may not be noticed or missed. However, good tone starts with clean sound and that sound is severely compromised. Let's face it, it's usually Strat-based designs featuring vibrato bridges (or trem bridges if we must be incorrect) that suffer from the problems (nuts and saddles being the usual culprits). There are usually other ways to address string breakage and tuning issues.
Horses for courses i guess, but personally the tone loss is just too much for me, although i respect that others either don't hear any losses and/ or are happy to make the sacrifice in favour of mechanical reliability. I would certainly challenge the idea that there is an *improvement* in tone though.
^ ^ Wot he said.
In my experience with Graph Tech nuts and saddles, they steal tone. They do solve some problems re. tuning and string breakage, but at a heavy cost. I avoid this material at all times.
Tusq is a great product, not at all like the black stuff, and is great on acoustic guitars. It is a vast tonal improvement over the plastic nuts and saddles found on many guitars. I have even seen Tusq saddle sets for TOM bridges.
As was mentioned above, if you're playing with a lot of gain, the Graph-Tech losses may not be noticed or missed. However, good tone starts with clean sound and that sound is severely compromised. Let's face it, it's usually Strat-based designs featuring vibrato bridges (or trem bridges if we must be incorrect) that suffer from the problems (nuts and saddles being the usual culprits). There are usually other ways to address string breakage and tuning issues.
Horses for courses i guess, but personally the tone loss is just too much for me, although i respect that others either don't hear any losses and/ or are happy to make the sacrifice in favour of mechanical reliability. I would certainly challenge the idea that there is an *improvement* in tone though.
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