Tusq vs Fossilized Mammoth Ivory Saddles

Violent5

Violent5

New member
I was goofing around with saddles this morning and did a little recording. I used a 2003 J-45 for the recordings. I swapped out a fossilized mammoth ivory saddle and a tusq saddle and played the same bits. I didn't do anything fancy. I just brought the levels up and hit record then swapped saddles and played the same thing without changing any settings. I recorded using a condensor mic and the factory pickup. I made mp3's of the mic alone and the pickup alone. You can have a listen and make your own conclusions if you like.

Mic'd- http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6078527&q=hi

Pickup- http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=6078539&q=hi
 
thats hard to believe? there's such a difference in just a saddle! it's hard to believe..... does a nut make such a drastic change too?
 
COOLCAT said:
....does a nut make such a drastic change too?
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Yeah the nut material effects the tone also. People say peg material does too but all I have here is plastic and I'd have to hear it to believe it.

To my ear the mammoth ivory saddle sounds a little more complex than the synthetic tusq. I think the tusq sounds louder when I'm sitting here playing and I thought that was true in the recordings also. In fact I had to use the tusq to set the levels because when I started with the mammoth the tusq was just a bit too hot at the same level with the pickup and I had to start over. Maybe the synthetic material is more consistant and is more efficient with the under saddle pickup.
 
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maybe i'm deaf, but, although i do hear a difference, i doubt me or anybody would "know" it without side-by-side comparison in a song. they're both good.

maybe when you're right there, playing it, it's more noticeable.
 
the tusq definately sounds better, I'd go with bone though. the mamouth pretty much sounds like crap (thin), like its a very light material but, there are other possible factors, like the seating in the bridge, the seating of the strings, thickness and height.

bone, properly seated gives a fuller, richer sound than both of your saddles and will probably* increase the volume (acoustically) plus you get to eat a tasty steak and be one with your instrument as part of the deal :) bonus.

* depending on previous material


Nuts make a difference in open strings, a plastic nut makes open strings sound more harsh and tingy. Bone, again properly seated, will mellow it out and make your tone more even. I've saddled and nutted enough accoustic guitars (my extra income) to say without a doubt that the nut sensitive factor is a myth, seating and material density is everything, just don't expect a difference except for open strings.

The pins do make a difference too, not so much after a saddle change, but a cheap and easy way to help a plastic saddled guitar is to use Martin bridge pins. they'll add some volume and sustain.

PS, I only listened to the mic'd one. I don't know how the pick-up sound is affected, I only do work on strait accoustic guitars.
 
I had a luthier install a bone saddle on my Martin D-15. It seems to give the guitar more 'oomph.' I am thinking of getting a bone nut as well, as the one on the Martin doesn't seem to have been cut well (pinging strings when tuning, strings staying sharp, etc.)
 
I'm just not in the mood. Muttley, you wanna quash this crap?

Sufficient to say, the difference is minimal and not noticeable. If you are hearing a difference, it is FAR more likely to be in the players attack or a poorly fit saddle than in the saddle material, much less the nut (which, if you actually bother to think about it at all, can only possibly effect anything while you are playing a string open). It's even more likely to be an artifact of the MP3 encoding, which guaranties that you will never actually be able to tell what you are listening to. I and Muttley (and most builders and repair folks) use bone because it lasts longer, looks good, is easy to work with, reasonably priced, and doesn't pinch the string (assuming it's well made). Anything else is crap.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light said:
I'm just not in the mood. Muttley, you wanna quash this crap?

Sufficient to say, the difference is minimal and not noticeable. If you are hearing a difference, it is FAR more likely to be in the players attack or a poorly fit saddle than in the saddle material, much less the nut (which, if you actually bother to think about it at all, can only possibly effect anything while you are playing a string open). It's even more likely to be an artifact of the MP3 encoding, which guaranties that you will never actually be able to tell what you are listening to. I and Muttley (and most builders and repair folks) use bone because it lasts longer, looks good, is easy to work with, reasonably priced, and doesn't pinch the string (assuming it's well made). Anything else is crap.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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No not really in the mood either. I was gigging last night and was too tired to post when I got in.

Just a few comments. Anything for a saddle other than plastic is a step up. Go with bone, you'll not hear a significant change with anything else no matter how exotic the claims. All a saddle needs to be is made of a good stiff material and well fitted. Snug in the saddle slot and perfectly flat at the bottom with contact at all points. Especially important if you have an undersaddle

The nut thing ditto, don't pay for something extravagant when bone is all you need, again well fitted. The effect it has on tone is small but the effect it has on setup and intonation can be great. With both you are likely to hear more improvement with well fitted bone than anything else.

I use bleached bone for all nuts and saddles.

I wouldn't knock your efforts to try and perform a controlled recording test. In fact I applaud them but and it's a big but, you can never equalise all things with tests like this. Believe me as someone that has done a good deal of research into acoustic tests on instruments, you have to examine every minute possible difference, asses how it effects your results and qualify that when you report on them. As I said in a recent thread, thats what makes musical acoustics such a fascinating subject and utterly unfathomable with it.:)
 
muttley600 said:
I use bleached bone for all nuts and saddles.
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Always unbleached here, because it is harder (bleaching decalcifies the bone), and it looks cooler (it has these sort of translucent light brown streaks running through it).


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light said:
Always unbleached here, because it is harder (bleaching decalcifies the bone), and it looks cooler (it has these sort of translucent light brown streaks running through it).


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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Yeh but on the downside it's more brittle or brash. I also like to shine mine up to a nice sheen. On unbleached I can't seem to get that in the same way and you can't see the grain so much. Bottom line it doesn't make a whole heap of difference really.
 
Ok, you two seem to know your stuff when it comes to saddle materials and nut materials - what are your thoughts on graphite?

I just swapped the bridge on my Strat from a Fender American Standard bridge with GraphTech saddles to a Gotoh Wilkinson with steel saddles. Obviously there are a LOT of other factors in play here, but even before I set it to float the tone seemed to change noticeably, particularly in the attack - the old bridge seemed a bit more muted in the attack, with fewer of the bell-like overtones that make Strats so cool in the first place.

Now, I know so far this seems like a stupid question, because regardless of WHY I'm digging the guitar more now (be it placebo "new gear" effect, be it just a bridge I find more comfortable, be it a different sustain block, whatever), what fundamentally matters is the fact that I dig the tone more, or at the VERY least think I do. However, I'm asking because I'm still running a graphite nut - I switched over from whatever's stock on a Fender to graphite because my old bridge just wouldn't hold tune if I even touched the bar. Even the graphite nut wasn't so good... For some reason however when I switched from the Fender to the Wilkinson bridge, tuning stability improved from "dive and the G string is a quarter step sharp" to "nearly perfect even after pretty extreme trem use."

So, I'm wondering if what I'm hearing is due from the change from graphite to steel, and if so if maybe enough of my tuning stability issues were (somehow) due to the bridge that it might be worth my while to try a nut that might sound better.

I could just cough up the $20-30 or whatever it'd cost me to buy a new nut and pay someone to cut it/install it (I don't have the tools, and while I could probably work it out I've owned this guitar for about ten years now and am WAY too attached to it to try something that I'm not sure I can pull off - a bridge swap is one thing, but this strikes me as a little more invasive...), but that'd involve sending it into the shop for a couple days, and ever since I threw this new bridge on I haven't been able to put this guitar down. It's like rediscovering an old friend...
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Ok, you two seem to know your stuff when it comes to saddle materials and nut materials - what are your thoughts on graphite?

I just swapped the bridge on my Strat from a Fender American Standard bridge with GraphTech saddles to a Gotoh Wilkinson with steel saddles. Obviously there are a LOT of other factors in play here, but even before I set it to float the tone seemed to change noticeably, particularly in the attack - the old bridge seemed a bit more muted in the attack, with fewer of the bell-like overtones that make Strats so cool in the first place.

Now, I know so far this seems like a stupid question, because regardless of WHY I'm digging the guitar more now (be it placebo "new gear" effect, be it just a bridge I find more comfortable, be it a different sustain block, whatever), what fundamentally matters is the fact that I dig the tone more, or at the VERY least think I do. However, I'm asking because I'm still running a graphite nut - I switched over from whatever's stock on a Fender to graphite because my old bridge just wouldn't hold tune if I even touched the bar. Even the graphite nut wasn't so good... For some reason however when I switched from the Fender to the Wilkinson bridge, tuning stability improved from "dive and the G string is a quarter step sharp" to "nearly perfect even after pretty extreme trem use."

So, I'm wondering if what I'm hearing is due from the change from graphite to steel, and if so if maybe enough of my tuning stability issues were (somehow) due to the bridge that it might be worth my while to try a nut that might sound better.

I could just cough up the $20-30 or whatever it'd cost me to buy a new nut and pay someone to cut it/install it (I don't have the tools, and while I could probably work it out I've owned this guitar for about ten years now and am WAY too attached to it to try something that I'm not sure I can pull off - a bridge swap is one thing, but this strikes me as a little more invasive...), but that'd involve sending it into the shop for a couple days, and ever since I threw this new bridge on I haven't been able to put this guitar down. It's like rediscovering an old friend...
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The original discussion centred around bridge saddles and the merits of several very similar materials. You've answered yourself really when you say
Obviously there are a LOT of other factors in play here,
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. Changing the whole bridge assembly can have a dramatic effect but it will not be down to the difference between saddles of bone or tusk or whatever.

Now if in the first place we were talking about the difference between two completely different acoustic bridges, say rosewood vs ebony then I would have been a lot more interested as the distinction is a big one. Same for bridge plate material, it's these that can make an acoustic sing out as they dictate the type of sound wave that is being amplified, how and at what rate it decays. The sound ultimately reaching us via the sound board. On an electric the sound comes to us via the string and it's vibration characteristics. These are the result of the materials and properties of the stuff that string is attached to. The harmonic complexity of the note in the string can be changed by altering any of them and the bridge assembly is a very important one. The nut much less so.

To answer your question about the nut. Change it for one that allows you trem to work best is a good idea. Changing it for one that you hope will give you a different tone is a waste of time and money.
 
muttley600 said:
To answer your question about the nut. Change it for one that allows you trem to work best is a good idea. Changing it for one that you hope will give you a different tone is a waste of time and money.
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That's dangerously close to being logical, dude. Careful, don't scare anyone. ;)


Kidding aside, yeah, you're right, I'm probably being stupid. If the guitar holds tune when I go all Joe Satriani on the bar, and I'm still digging the hell out of the tone, then I should probably just take a good thing for what it is. :)
 
Where are they now?

DrewPeterson7 said:
That's dangerously close to being logical, dude. Careful, don't scare anyone. ;)


Kidding aside, yeah, you're right, I'm probably being stupid. If the guitar holds tune when I go all Joe Satriani on the bar, and I'm still digging the hell out of the tone, then I should probably just take a good thing for what it is. :)
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What happened to these obscure members? Did the lynching mob get them?
VP:cool:
 
Victory Pete said:
What happened to these obscure members? Did the lynching mob get them?
VP:cool:
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Say what there VP?

Drew hangs around here all the time. He's pwnd you a few times as I remember, or did you mean one of the other guys but thought we could guess that by you quoting Drew?

Help us out here.
 
muttley600 said:
Say what there VP?

Drew hangs around here all the time. He's pwnd you a few times as I remember, or did you mean one of the other guys but thought we could guess that by you quoting Drew?

Help us out here.
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Oh yes, I am aware of Drew, I meant the guys with the good ears!
VP
 
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