pedantic nut material question

[PlaneSimple]

Okay so I was setting up my newly minted homemade mandolin. Yay!
and I cut a nut slot too deeply. Not so yay; opted to replace and learn my lesson the hard way.
I had cut the original nut from a very old piece of deer shed antler.. so it had mojo.. but I also hear that perhaps antler is not the best material for a nut. So reconsidering material.. I will probably just get some bleached cow bone. HOWEVER..
Overthinking this leads me to the question of zero-nut tone.. and the overall tone of an instrument since the vibration is translated to the body through the metal of the frets
: metal.
I recall the commonplace brass nut from the world of solidbody electric.. and how that fad has faded.
What are your thoughts on the tone of zero nut mandolins. Likewise, what are your thoughts on my wondering if the classic bone nut makes no difference since most of the notes are transmitted through the metal frets anyway.
edit- mine is not a zero nut mando.. hence the poblem of a deep cut nut. Just got to wondering about this.

[Jim Adwell]

IMO, as far as sound the material the nut is made from is, um, immaterial. I've made wooden nuts for nylon string ukuleles from a variety of woods and as far as I can tell they all sound the same as a bone nut, or close to it. From a mechanical point of view, though, for steel strings you'd want something pretty hard that wears well and is resistant to thin pieces of metal under high tension moving across it. The right kind of cow bone is pretty good in this regard. Dunno much about other nut materials except Micarta which I've used in the past when I didn't have cow bone for one reason or another. It seemed to work okay, but I don't know how long it lasts in use. I nothing about antler.

I use zero frets exclusively now because I hate fiddling with cutting nut slots. An open string note sounds exactly the same as a note fretted on the first fret to my ears, except for pitch, of course.

[John Kelly]

I'd go with what Jim is saying here, especially about the use of the zero fret. I have recently been using a product which I know as Corian, but it has other trade names too. It is used to make high-quality tops for kitchen units and the stuff I got (from a friend in the trade who had lots of offcuts) is very solid, stable and cuts and polishes very well.

On instruments where I have not used a zero fret I have used bone to make the nuts and I remember when I was at college in Anniesland in Glasgow on the Stringed Instruments Building Course one of the students brought in a piece of red deer antler to try to make a nut for a guitar, but it proved to be very irregular in composition and was full of air holes - well, what looked like air holes but I'm sure there's a proper label for those small bubbles! He ended up with a big pile of scrap and no proper nut.

[Michael Lewis]

Cut a piece of bone the same width as the slot that is too deep, and glue it into the slot with super glue. When it's dry you can file off the excess material and recut the slot. this time be more careful when you cut the depth.

This is the idea Paul Hostetter suggested to use to save vintage nuts, and it works very well for saving any nut that was cut or worn too deeply. You may have to cut the slot wider to make the sides of the slot parallel with each other.

[Tavy]

I like zero frets a lot - but detect very little tonal difference based on zero-fret or not, and/or nut material.

Biggest tonal difference for open vs closed notes comes from the effect of a squidgy flexible finger holding the string in place as opposed to a hard precisely cut slot - ie more damping from a finger, more sustain from an open string.

[multidon]

I would have thought someone would have mentioned by now that it is too late to convert the OPs instrument to zero fret. The board has to be slotted for that to begin with. He is stuck with having to cut a proper nut.

I would recommend cutting the slots a tad high this time. It is much easier to take a little more off later than it is to try and add it back.

The best way to keep from going to far is to add your desired nut action to your fret height then stack your feeler gauges to equal that number, then hold that stack against the nut on the fret board side to act as a stop for the files.

[PlaneSimple]

No I understand that this mando is not going to be zero-nut. I just thought it seemed odd that so much faith is put in bone etc for tone when only four notes out of a whole song is transmitted over frets (for a non-zero-nut mando).. certainly abrasive resistance is a major factor too!
I have replaced the nut with a piece of Lignum Vitae.. sounds nice.. I know the strings want to dig so I'll find out how quickly. When I get out to the store or get a piece of appropriate bone, I will probably replace that LV. Maybe it will sound better. Fun to learn and experiment.

One thing is for sure.. I am better at fitting a nut now than I was a day ago! : )
I've got some copper pieces.. maybe I'll try that this week.

[Phil Goodson]

The term is zero FRET, not zero-nut. All nuts are zero.

[PlaneSimple]

yeah I don't why I latched onto, zero-nut.. maybe I was coffee deficient!