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I recently found out about tagua nut, also known as vegetable ivory. I’ve got some slices on order, hoping to use them to experiment with inlay. I’m hoping they’ll be a suitable substitute for ivory.

Wud you are right MS

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I don't know anything about it Colleen but like the idea of a substitute.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Hesh !! We have hit on something here , In the last 30 min I have given this much thought and considerable research Fossilized BS is made from what the Bull consumed ie Grains and grass and fiber ... Now follow me here ... Through the long process of mastication ,digestion and and deposit as well as century's to fossilize the material you have final product once mill and shaped of ............

VEGAN BRIDGE PINS

Im Tellin ya bro , we can make a Killin !!!!!!

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How about the general feeling out there among some that the ultimate way to buy a guitar is to commission a build? Any thoughts? Right or wrong? Gray zone?

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I remember Brock describing this as the romance of the commission and I hear you.

You and I went a different route Terry building our spec guitars and keeping our creative license close to the vest. It worked very well for me and I never did a single commission and was offered dozens. I found it far more rewarding and straight forward for people to be able to judge an actual instrument in their hands instead of ponder the possibilities of futures.

I've always advocated for people doing what they want and we do that too in our repair business. So I really don't have an opinion on commissions other than they were not right for me and in hindsight I did the right thing only selling what was available for a try. A commission to this day seems like a deadline and a commitment and a whole bunch of words that make me have a-fib On a positive note maybe I could be a human tonerite

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I just remembered one from the other day - a guy told me that, after a truss rod has been adjusted, the guitar should not be played for 24 hours or you will “warp the neck”. He was serious!

3 pages and no one brought up hide glue construction? I started using hide glue a few years ago now and I cannot for the life of me hear any tonal difference from guitars I built with Titebond. None.



That's hilarious. I have a bolt on neck story too that goes back to the 90's when that argument was even more of a hot topic. I was building classical guitars at the time and I live in a University town where the music department has a fairly well known prof of classical guitar. One of his students approached me for a guitar. I had one already built and it was by far the best one I had made to date and I would put it up against any well known classical guitar makers guitars and it would have compared well. But at that time I started experimenting with bolt on necks instead of traditional Spanish heel construction of which I had built several of. The student loved the guitar but said he had to have it approved by his teacher. The teacher rejected it becasue of the bolt on neck even though he said it sounded good.

I still make bolt on classical guitars.

In fairness, JF, there are really good reasons to build with hide glue that have nothing to do with tone. But to the extent the point of your post is to debunk the notion that hide glue makes the guitar sound better, I put that in the category of “people I respect are on both sides of the issue.” One thing is for sure: nobody argues that other glues sound better. The debate is between those who think hide glue sounds better and those who think it makes no difference to tone.

Engineering-wise, I agree - the tonal difference is due to the mass of the pins being different.
I now need to go weigh some bridge pins, particularly plastic vs bone.
I shoot for a low mass of my bridges...but I like bone pins, which I _feel_ are going to be heavier. Need more data!

How about weighing in on nut material, bone vs plastic vs brass?
I _feel_ that the harder bone material has less inherent damping than plastic/synthetics (I guess that's my feeling on bone vs plastic pins as well).


Great fun thread.

That's a new one to me too, wow pretty ignorant.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Another one: When you change strings ya gotta change one at a time or you will warp the neck.

That's an excellent point JF HHG and can we perceive a difference in tone. I can't and I'm a proponent of it's use. I also know Jeff T. and how he gets $30K for a Titebond guitar... and the millions of non-HHG guitars that also sound killer.

I applaud you for the bolt-on classical neck much more serviceable AND no one will have to intentionally distort the body come neck re-set time if it ever comes. I can't know but I strongly suspect that the Spanish heel intentionally exploits lots of additional surface area in the junction with the body for maximum vibrational transfer since nylon strings have less energy than steel strings. So maybe we lose a bit with a bolt-on, maybe not but you are infinitely more serviceable and that's super important to me AND my clients who I want to receive real value.

One thing that Dave Collins has always pushed on me and everyone else is when we consider some of these designs such as the Spanish heel or the dovetail or why HHG and not titebond if you add to the mix that they used what they had, just as Gibson was known to do it makes more sense. A dove tail does not require a hardware store.... HHG is one size fits all kind of... etc and on and on.

You're right on HHG and the market perception too out there. Even in Les Paul land the best ones built at Gibson these days use HHG and they charge premiums for it, I speak of the custom shop, relic stuff.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Tell that to someone who changed their strings on a Floyd Rose Trem and did them all at once only to find the trem trying to fall out the back of the guitar and way off it's studs.... . We get calls about this from time to time and people think they destroyed their shredder.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

There is a kernel of truth in that one, if you leave all the strings off for an extended period of time and don't loosen the truss rod along with them. Especially with a single compression rod, which is essentially a giant 7th string that counterbalances the other 6.

Hey Chuck thanks for letting me know you are enjoying this thread, that's why I started it so that makes me feel like $3, I usually feel like $1

Yes weigh pin materials and there is vast differences with bone being one of the heavier choices. Now here's the rub and I was a low mass builder too who religiously weighed everything on my guitars including some estimates on the finish weight. My best guitar is 2.9 lbs and my favorite is 3.6lbs so my stuff is some of the lightest that I've seen.

We can't know if a guitar will benefit from more mass in the bridge area or less but when swapping pins we can simulate either. Over built instruments likely benefit from more mass in the bridge area but that's a guess on my part and I can't prove it. Conversely I would think lightly built instruments can get away with smaller bridges, lighter pins, etc.

I used bone pins on one of mine and didn't like the tone. What I settled on for my own Heshtones were BRW pins that I had made for me. I still have a bunch too. Now I didn't use BRW for tone but looks since my BRW instruments were intended to look dipped in BRW with BRW binding, tuner buttons, head plate, fret board and bridge.

Another related and important pin subject is unslotted pins and the great benefit over slotted pins.

For nuts we are huge fans of quality bone and will not use anything else. If a client brings us a pre-made Tusk nut we will decline the job and have dozens of times. Bone, quality femurs from cattle that free range and use their legs (and do yoga ) is our first choice for nuts. It's superior to all others in our view and will give excellent utility for a very long time. It's serviceable, can be repaired and even filled with light cured dental fillings.

We don't even have those boxes of plastic nuts for cheap instruments we are so hard core on bone for nuts. So if you have a $100 guitar and need a new nut you will pay a bit south of $200 for that nut and a complete set-up with us. We are high (price....) but it's also intended to be a "punitive" quotation to ward off the folks better served elsewhere so we can get back to billable hours. We try to charge about $150 an hour and we get it.

So bone is our choice, brass we see as blasts from the past coming to our shop but no one is asking for it these days. Ivory in Ann Arbor could start a war people there are so hell bent on saving elephants (I like elephants too) and it's against the law now to fashion it into things in the states so we won't touch it.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Not in our shop there isn't. We unstring instruments all of the time and hang them for a year or more never touching the truss rod. When we get back to them they are not impacted in anyway and can be repaired, set-up in a day with NO waiting for things to settle in and out the door they go, next. This is not new construction so things are settled in.

We have a nightmare Les Paul custom shop double cut-away that we've had for 8 months trying to match that puke green color (Dave just nailed it and it looks fantastic) and that guitar will be set-up in a few hours and out the door. We never touched the truss rod to hang it in our spray booth for 8 months.

I don't see this as making any difference at all Dennis. Sorry.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Maybe humidity swings are necessary to make it happen? Or maybe I've been worrying over nothing. How do necks ever develop permanent backbow then?

I know most of us are acoustic only builders here but there are a lot of electric players out there too who think that glossy finishes on electric guitars don't sound as good as oil based finishes. Then of course there is the 'tone wood' argument on electric guitars too. If they called it 'tone density' I might buy it.

Same.

The brass comment was in jest, for those who remember them.

We can agree to disagree on nut compensation: I've had much better luck with that than anything else. The Bandora was just an extreme example.

I'm with you on bridge pins, for sure. People are convinced that the pin hardness matters because the pins transmit sound. I have been asking them to measure that for years with no takers. If it's real, it can be measured...

Break angle is another one. I've seen posts stating that the tone improves when you hit some magic angle, which can be as much as 45 degrees. The only thing that gets you is a lot of tipping force on the front of a saddle slot; hardly a 'benefit'. So far as I can tell from my experiments anything more than around 15-18 degrees is unnecessary. That's especially true on archtops, where the added break angle produces more down bearing on the top. It doesn't 'transmit more sound' from the strings to the top, and when you get too much it kills sound. There seems to be a threshold there, and it would be interesting (if time consuming) to explore that.

That brings up Brandolini's Law: it takes an order of magnitude more effort to debunk bull---- than it does to generate it.

Because I've been on the nut to encourage people here to not be heartbroken or break anyone else's heart by producing a truss rodless... steel string instrument one of my justifications is what I see in the winter in Michigan. When a guitar is permitted to dry out the frets sprout out the ends and the neck generally goes into back bow and has a partial permanent set in back bow. With a double action rod no problem it's good to go in 10 seconds with a couple of adjustments and status checks.

In case people don't fully understand how prevalent this problem is we see guitars with back bow problems in the winter and spring perhaps ten times a week. It's a huge part of our business bringing back dried out guitars.

So how I see guitars go into back bow most commonly is drying out over time which can be only a couple of weeks.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Your mention of ivory here gets me wondering if tagua nut (vegetable ivory) might work. I saw a video of a guy making a guitar pick from a slice. That stuff is HARD. I have some on order, so if I get a thick enough slice, I might try it. Not sure they come big enough for a saddle, tho…

Absolutely but I would still like to someday spend some time with each other so I can demonstrate with strobe tuner what we can do with the nuts lots. Even Dan E. was impressed and said so when he visits us. He started long ago in the shop that we now have and is a good friend.

You know Al I've always liked you and greatly respected you and where I got the mass thing explanation for bridge pins was you. Dave Collins got it from you too and it's religion for us both now, thank You!!

Regarding break angles I completely agree with you too. A lot of my work includes a final set-up to a spec for action. So many guitars that are soon to need the you-know-what neck reset when you drop the saddle low enough to have 4/64" action on the high e at the 12th there is little to no break angle left. So we mill in string ramps in the bridge IF it's appropriate for the instrument meaning it's not a pre-war Martin...

Often it's the case that my break angle on these set-ups is single digit and very low. I test by hitting notes moderately hard and if the vibrational wave doesn't breach the top of th saddle I call it good and of course it is what it is too and not much more I could do to improve things.

But you're right these instruments have minimal break angles over the saddle and for the hundreds and hundreds that we've done over the years we have never had a client say that the tone changed at all. And... they should know since they are used to the guitar.

Thanks for your thoughts as always Al and thanks for all that I learned from you very much appreciated. I truly love what I do for a living now and feel very fortunate to have had a lot of help from many people.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

It might I'm not familiar with it. What makes a good nut or saddle is also very hard, easily worked, if it polishes to a high shine that's nice too, brittle is bad and widely available is good.

We actually sought out cows that free range because their bones are denser with fewer voids. Ole Hesh hates it when I spend an hour on the nicest nut I've ver made and final sanding reveals an ugly air pocket....

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Ann Arbor Guitars