I'm looking at a new USACG and trying to figure out what nut material to go with. Here's what my research has turned up...

Bone is obviously the awesome vintage stuff, but I've read some issues with the bone nuts catching the strings in tremolo use.

tusq - not as hard as bone, but easier to work with. The material quality of it is more consistent.

corian - hard and cheap, I don't know how it catches the string during tremolo use though.

Tusq XL - impregnated with delrin for self lubrication. I also heard of people using straight up delrin for tremolo nuts...

So clearly I'm going for a hard, lubricated nut. I've also heard of people who just use bone nuts and lubricate the slots with Nut Sauce, Tri-Flo teflon lube, etc...

any opinions?

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life is too short for bad tone.

bone is very vintage, more for looks now than anything. Corian is great stuff to use, naturally lubricating. Doesn't really matter, but graphite is a great material. Many use pencil shavings (graphite) as a lubricant. There is a great debate about nuts considering once you fret out a string, the nut doesn't matter.

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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Agreed about the fretting the string and taking the nut out of the equation. Although I think it's important to consider the tone of open strings as well. My main concern is preventing string binding in the nut. If corian naturally lubricates I might go with that.

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life is too short for bad tone.

A properly slotted bone nut will work fine. If you're gonna do constant dive bombs, get a locking tremolo.

I have always used bone for nuts on banjos, mandolins and acoustic guitars. I did just took an entry level Gibson acoustic and put a TUSQ saddle in and I do have to say I was impressed with the quality of sound. If I would have had a way to cut bone thin enough, I would have used it instead how ever.

Since bone can be lubricated so easily with a lead pencil, graphite or any of the commercial "sauces" available and is cheap and readily available I still believe it to be the best for nuts-in my humble opinion.

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So heres to your survival, swimming up the stream, crossing over one dam after another till we get to Rock and Roll Heavens Gate!

Not true! When you use the vibrato, the strings slide in and out of the nut, and so you do need to lubricate it and have a quality nut cut by a professional. Other than that, you're spot on. A bone nut with graphite works great

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Synthetic bone is great. Just stay away from brass. You will have binding and tuning problems with brass.