Emerald Nuts and Saddles

[jwellsy]

The few pics I've seen of Emerald nuts they appear to be gray Carbon/Graphite. What are the made of, and how hard is it to change?

Same questions about the saddle. Is the OEM saddle compensated?

Also, do they slot/ramp the pin holes?

[Long Jon]

The nut and compensated saddle are both beautifully crafted from highly resonant “Black Tusq XL” a man-made ivory, apparently it withstands any amount of aggressive playing, massive string bends and tremolo use ! So that’s a plus .

According to the enclosed ticket this material is “permanently lubricated throughout with Teflon® to reduce string breakage” .

The pin holes on my stock X7 are slotted and ramped to some extent but still need a grooved pin.

The saddle and nut could be swapped as on any guitar, but the saddle is quite cunningly compensated on both the A and B strings,
it’s a nice piece of work , I can’t honestly imagine bettering it with some random piece of bone.

[Long Jon]

A thing of beauty. With cunning compensations

[jwellsy]

Lubrication infused Tusk, what a concept.

A & B compensated,now that's pretty cool too.

Thanks for all the 411 and pic.

LJ;

Nice photo, really makes the compensation clear. Thank you.

[Captain Jim]

Well, I wasn't as informed as my buddy Jon, but the compensated saddle on my X7 was easy to remove and sand down. The action on the X7 was higher than I prefer when I received it. I understand that; some may play a smaller guitar harder. I took the saddle down at the first string change - sounds great, plays great.

[Long Jon]

I wasn’ all that informed Jim , I was quoting from the label that came with the guitar.
(forgot to say that Graphtec is the maker, Tusq is the stuff itself).

I was gonna sand mine down a wee bit too, but when I tweaked the truss rod a bit the action came out about perfect.
Strangely, the rod had no tension on it at all when I got the guitar, had to give it a good turn before it even began to bite.

Anyhoo, new Martin PB mediums on, it seems great now.

Looking more closely It seems the low E is also compensated.

[Long Jon]

Originally Posted by EvanB

LJ;

Nice photo, really makes the compensation clear. Thank you.

Lucky shot Evan,
Using the editor in Flickr, I zoomed in and cropped one of the many I took with my iPad , in the bright sunshine back on NGD !

[seamusknives]

Originally Posted by Long Jon

I wasn’ all that informed Jim , I was quoting from the label that came with the guitar.
(forgot to say that Graphtec is the maker, Tusq is the stuff itself).

I was gonna sand mine down a wee bit too, but when I tweaked the truss rod a bit the action came out about perfect.
Strangely, the rod had no tension on it at all when I got the guitar, had to give it a good turn before it even began to bite.

Anyhoo, new Martin PB mediums on, it seems great now.

Looking more closely It seems the low E is also compensated.

Like Long Jon's, my X20 had zero tension on it when it arrived. Tightening it and taking .020" off the saddle has much improved it's playing. I'm taking my time and had purchased another GraphTech saddle while keeping the original as a control. At this point, I'm looking at the nut to figure out if it can be fine-tuned.

[jwellsy]

Originally Posted by seamusknives

I'm taking my time and had purchased another GraphTech saddle while keeping the original as a control. At this point, I'm looking at the nut to figure out if it can be fine-tuned.

This is pretty much what I had in mind, getting a few nuts and experimenting with string spacing. I played a guitar years ago that the fingering fit me like no other has since. So I'm trying to recreate that feel so I can quantitatively measure and define the specs of the guitar that still haunts me.

Now I'm thinking of making a set of several cheap nuts for one of my $500 guitars of various string spacings and FB radius. Not to find the right tone, but to find my ideal neck specs.

Going from shop to shop playing and measuring random guitars isn't getting me any closer to defining what specs to order an Emerald with. I need to narrow this down a bit more methodically.