What are the differences in tone/sound between the different metals used for the nut and bridge.
Round bar stock--stainless or cold rolled steel, aluminum or brass, etc.

Many thanks for the opinions.

Bill/or anyone else, what have you found to be the dominant, and/or subtle factors in developing good sound/tone from the various body materials, hardware, pu's, strings and types of construction?

Just changing the shape/design of the bridge/nut, or how they are grooved can cause a change in tone, no matter what it's made of. Plus, how the bridge(especially) is secured, if at all, to the body is of consequence.

It's hard to say what is 'best', as to each thier own, both player and instrument. But I've found(overall) that brass gives a(for metal) warmer sound than the harder metals. Aluminum CAN be great, but sometimes gives a cheap sound. Bone/ivory, plastic/bakelite or the new composits are certainly tone friendly in the right applications.

In the '70's, we thought that brass was the holy grail for tone. It does sing interestingly when you machine it, but I have lost faith in that idea. Aluminum transmits sound well -- at least it doesn't damp it much, and doesn't seem to color the sound it transmits, very much -- so if you have a great hunk of wood maybe aluminum is good just to get the sound there (and back to the strings). I think steel is a more efficient transmitter of sound, but you have to watch out for the damping effect of extra mass -- unless perhaps you want the nut/bridge to really be the dominant influences against which the string reacts, perhaps because the guitar body doesn't really have a lot of desireable (or other) resonance, in which case perhaps beefy steel parts are good.

Because I know very little about metallurgy, I tend to think of metal in simplistic terms, like if it's too soft or hard, does it impede the vibration. Titanium sheets have a lot of "spash" does that mean it has a wider "bandwidth" whereas stainless sheets don't have a lot of splash by comparison.....

Early Gibsons used brass, Fenders used steel, Eharps used aluminum. In my highly biased and subjective opinion, I think that alloys that have silicon in them sound more musical than those that don't. Silicon helps the weldability where as zinc improves the machinability. 6000 series aluminum has silicon, 2000 has zinc (as well as other stuff), so I think 6061 T-6 sounds better than 2024 T-4.

SiB, silicon bronze sounds better than brass (copper and zinc).

Steel is ok, but it rusts, stainless doesn't rust, but I don't think it's as musical (in particular, the inexpensive alloys like 303 and 304) as aluminum or bronze. I think the most musical is titanium, but it's VERY unfriendly to work with. There's all kinds of exotic alloys, but they aren't practical and they're pricey.

[This message was edited by chas smith on 02 August 2003 at 06:40 PM.]

Donald Ruetenik sent me some pics of a absolute piece of art guitar!!! Beautiful machine work. Hope he post them here.

Chas. I am intrigued by your suggestion to sink the bridge in the wood. I am at a loss to see what the difference would be between a nice titanium bridge sitting on the surface of the guitar or the same bridge .100 in the body???? I might could see some more transfer if the sides of the rout were just about perfect and made full contact with the sides of the bridge. Does it REALLY make that much of a difference?

I don't have any real answers; but someday I plan to design a double-neck, 8-string for myself. When I do, I plan to use a super-hardened-chromed steel nut and bridge, (each about 7/16" in diameter), much like the hard chrome bars, but smaller. Of course, all machining and threading for mounting must be done before they are hardened.

Since it's all about sound, and the fact that sound travels better through a solid (and I think, the harder the solid the better); I will inset, on each neck a 3" wide flat (1/8" thick) aluminum plate, reaching from the nut to the bridge, into the wooden body on the bottom. I'll then make sure that the bridge and the nut are held into place by bolts long enough to go through the thickness of the wood and screw into the 3" rectangular aluminum plate inset into the bottom. Maybe, even make these plates long enough and thicker at each end so leg sockets can be machined into them. This way vibrations will travel from the strings, through the nuts and bridges, through their bolts, through the plates and leg sockets, and into the legs. In other words, metal, all the way from the strings to the rubber tips on the legs.

I'm unsure of what it will sound like; but I'm sure it will sound very different from anything that I have heard to date.

If you want to experiment with different materials for nuts and bridges make them from either steel, aluminum, or brass; and design them with a cradle on top (180 degree concave semicircle) to accommodate 1/4" pieces of round stock of different materials (visualize them as dowel holders). This way you can easily hear how combinations of materials sound and change them just by loosening the strings. You'll need to design string guides into the nut on the tuner side.

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Does it REALLY make that much of a difference

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I think strings through the body guitars sound better because more of the body is included in the pressure of the strings. When a bridge is just bolted to the top it couples with the surface and there is a lot of tension on the two or three #10 screws going into the body. (Of course it works, because most guitars are done this way), but I think by countersinking the bridge, the front edge takes some of the pressure off the screws and makes more surface contact between the bridge and body.

Another issue is paint, between the nut and bridge and body which is another medium that the sound has to travel through. I had a Dobro that didn't sound very good, so I took it back to the factory and upon inspection, Donald Young discovered that there was a layer of paint between the cone and the shell.

Granted, this is all small stuff, but it adds up and in the long run that guitar will probably outlive all of us. If you spend an extra hour now in the fabrication, amortized over the life of the instrument, it's pretty insignificant.

Here's a titanium bridge on a 10 string flat top. It bolts through to an aluminum plate so that the top of the guitar is sandwiched. The second photo is the bridge on my 6 string bass steel called Junior Blue (it has pickups on both ends of the neck) and it's stainless steel. It's 1/2" round stock and countersunk into the aluminum which is 7075 aerospace.

[This message was edited by chas smith on 03 August 2003 at 12:03 PM.]

All the ideas that everyone has put down here are thought provoking. Perhaps we could all lobby Bob and Brad to creat a topic section of HOMEBUILT STEELS. This subject pops up so often on the Forum.

Cradling the nut and bridge bar is important for preventing shifting and the transmission of vibration. IMHO carbon steel (non-stainless) is the better or at least I thought until Chas lite the titanium light bulb. I use 1/2" bar of W-1 steel with minimal grooving. I heat-treat and brine quench these to RC 62/63. I've tried brass, aluminum (6061, 7075), stainless (440C, 304, 416), bumper chromed (thud), bone and case hardened LC. All have their own unique characteristics. Now I've just got to try titanium when I find it in 1/2" bar stock.

This is a "metals" thread, but there have been some interesting related discussions regarding the effects of radius. Your stuff generally shows a preference for smaller radii (maybe around 1/4"-5/16"?) while others opt for fatter, say 1/2." Fender favored smaller, esp. if you go by groove depth. Is there really a "bend" factor in the sound (be it tone or sustain) of non-pedal nuts and bridges, or is this just about total moving mass?

[This message was edited by Jack Anderson on 04 August 2003 at 11:00 AM.]

As for bridges I think that like strings are made of different materials (Eg: plain and wound) the bridge could also be of various materials, depending the type of string on it. I would like to see a warmer material under thin strings to cut off some of that sizzyness and a brittle mateial under very thick string to assure the least muddiness possible.

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Would you go with some titanium rod stock in an aluminum cradle, another time?

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