So Are We Now Talking About Acoustic Guitars Or Electric Guitars?
In That Case, No Need For Pickup Changes In Your Electric Guitar As The Nut Is So Vitally Important To Your Overall Electric Guitar Tone.
See the Fender article for their take on the topic regarding electric guitars.
All I Know Is This...I Am So Glad After All These Years That Paul Reed Smith Himself Finally Stumbled On Bone Nuts And Decided To Finally Introduce Them On His Guitars All These Years Later. I Only Wish His Tone Chasing, Guitar Advancing And Improving Of The Instrument Would Have Discovered Such A Thing Sooner.
He gets to chase what interests him, and sell the products that result from his chase.
You get to decide whether or not to buy the guitars on offer. It's fair both ways.
All that said, the most beautiful sounding guitar I have ever owned - overall - is the Northern Lights PS20 that Black Plaid now owns, and it has the composite nut. No question in my mind that the tone is wonderful as-is.
I think the bone nuts sound different. But I wouldn't change the composite nut on that Northern Lights guitar, or on my PS 30th Anniversary CU24.
If I'm happy with the tone, it ain't broke, so I ain't fixin' it. So there are limits as to what I'd personally swap out.
While I Can Admit That Nut Material Can Effect The Tone I Would Also Suggest That So Can String Gauge, Cables, String Material, Pick Thickness, Pick Material, Amp Settings, Speaker Cables Used, Speaker Cabinets, Speakers, Cabinet Grill Cloth Material, Cabinet On Wheels Or Not On Wheels, Slanted Vs Straight And So On And So On And So On.
Of course! Innumerable things are involved. That's what makes breaking it all down into all the details so interesting, at least for purpose of discussions here.
Like I Said Before, The Only Way To Know How Various Nut Materials Will Sound Is To Replace The Nut On Your Guitars And Listen To Them With All Things Being Identical. There Is No Other Way To Know As Each Guitar Is Unique And What We Hear And Like Fluctuates.
While that would be a great experiment, it isn't really necessary.
For example, most of us know the difference between how a guitar with a maple top sounds vs all-mahogany. Or single coils vs humbuckers. Trems vs stop-tails.
You don't need to install single coils in your Les Paul to know that the two types of pickups sound different. You don't need to saw the neck off your CU24 and bolt on a different neck to know bolt-ons have a different type of tone vibe.
It's simply a matter of experience teaching us what to listen for.
We recognize these differences based on our experience. If you know what to listen for, lots of small differences exhibit certain similar tone characteristics. I've had a number of guitars with Brazilian Rosewood fretboards, going back to 1967. I've had a lot of guitars with IRW. Experience tells me the two woods have slightly different tone characters.
I didn't need to cut the IRW fretboard off a guitar and glue on a BRW fretboard to figure this out.
Experience informs us. It's enough.
All That Aside, I Keep Things As Simple As I Can And Start With Tuning Stability. If That Isn't Rock Solid You Have Nothing. No Matter How Great That Nut Material May Sound It Will Sound That Way Out Of Tune.
I totally agree. No question about it. I haven't had problems with the bone nuts. So it's not an issue here in Studio Craptastic.
Like What You Like, Use What Works For You...After All It Is Your Guitar To Enjoy As You Wish.
TRUE!! All of this stuff is - and should be - up to the individual player. I tried to make that clear in my previous post.
