graphtec black tusq nut and saddles.

[sgplayers]

I was thinking about the benefits of staying in tune longer and not breaking as many high E strings and was wondering if the tone would be displeasing to my ear. has any one put Graphtech on both sides and how does it sound.

[sg50]

Do your E strings consistently break at the bridge and the saddle? It seems unlikely that you've got both a lousy nut and a lousy saddle on that string.

 

As for the material, I'd bet that you'd never notice a difference. So it can't hurt. You could also probably drill a 1" hole in the tail of the guitar and probably not notice any difference in the tone either. But I'd start by looking at the saddle and the nut under a magnifying glass, and cleaning them.

[disaster]

I've used several of the GraphTech nuts. I don't find them significantly superior to the standard plastic nut that came on the SG. The TUSQ varieties all sound the same to me. I prefer the white TUSQ over the black. There are also the non-teflon GraphTech nuts that are also very good replacements for the factory nut. The key benefit of these pieces is that they are pre-slotted for loads of different guitars. There are 1/2 dozen or so just for the LP/SG guitars. It takes some studying of the catalog to determine exactly which nut you'll need for your guitar. If you can't find a pre-slotted nut they also make pure blanks you can slot yourself. I've done a few for various strat knock-offs. I didn't want to slot my own but there weren't any pre-slotted choices in GraphTech's catalog.

 

I haven't found a better variety of pre-slotted nuts than GraphTech. If you don't want to slot your own these are worth your time. If you are willing to slot your own I think there are better materials available than the TUSQ.

 

Good Luck

[sgplayers]

It always breaks at the bridge. I have looked closely as you have suggested and I didn't find any thing. I just went back to brite wires because other brands are breaking too. I use 10 s and it gets old buying sets just for the one string so i change all of them when it happens. funny thing is my less Paul does it too. mostly when I loosen the string to do some kind of work it breaks. I don't know how loosening a string causes it to break.

[sgplayers]

Well I did it, I installed Graphtech nut and saddles. I also went ahead and put new Klusion vintage locking tuners on my sg special although i had to get lighter colored buttons. it tuned up great and first thing I noticed was a little darker or warmer sound. but that's ok, because earlier I put burst bucker #1 and #3 with coil tap on it and it actually sounds pretty good. The tuners were a little high priced but it look somewhat original. The harmonics sound way different. so I guess there are some changes to tone and harmonics. I'm curious to find out if the strings will last longer. thanks for the input.