[Strings - Nut - Saddle - Pins - They are essential to TONE!]

Anybody ever heard of "Kauila" wood ? It is the wood used by "Ancient Hawaiians to tool down to make axe heads and spears ect. then used for cutting down Koa and other trees for Canoe building and such. It was their Iron wood so to speak. I'm in the process of quartersawing it to make nut, saddle and bridge pins. Any thoughts ?

 

I would love to try a saddle out of this stuff on my classical. It sure looks beautiful.

[Strings - Nut - Saddle - Pins - They are essential to TONE!]

I agree about the bone saddle all the way, the nut about halfway and the pins not at all.

The saddle is a crucial link in the chain, the vibrations that drive the top pass directly through it. Assuming the nut is set up correctly for ease of play, it can only affect tone on open strings, and in my opinion the goal here is to match the tone of a fretted note. Nothing wrong with bone here, but composits can do a pretty good job here too. as for bridge pins, I believed for a long time that harder pins and more mass gave better sustain. it still makes sense to me to think more mass will have a drastic impact on tone-volume-sustain. But in my actual experience, not so much. I used brass pins for a long time on my dread, then someone told me that plastic pins would have less of a damping effect because they are lighter. I bought a set, and changed them last time I changed strings. I do not believe I could actually tell you the difference by sound alone. But then, I know this is not popular to admit.