SG gets a boner!

The single biggest cause of copy guitars and cheaper instruments in general not sounding as powerful as real Fenders or Gibsons is not weak pickups or duff wood, it this little beggar....


The humble and rather crap....cheap plastic nut. It sucks tone, stuffs up sustain and is as cool as a polyether anorak. I am going to replace this hunk of poo with a new nut made from a nice well aged bit of cow thigh bone. My supply of bone is our local pet shop. I buy a bone intended for fido, tantalise the cats with it for a while.....then boil the bejusus out of it for several hours..... leaving it to bleach out on our flat roof for a month or two.

Here I am cutting a blank from said bone.....music retailers will generously sell you a bone nut blank for six quid, I get about ten from a 99p bone!

Here I am using the old nut as a template to shape the new bone one, plus position and part cut the string slots. Some gutar repair men ponce about with graduated width nut slot files...I simply have a selection of junior hacksaw blades with some or all of the 'set' ground off of them. They do the same job and cost pence.
Here's the nut installed....
Note...the fret ends are still rough, the metallic blue is not cut back or clear coated...and in fact there's still loads to do. Will have fun choosing new hardware to replace the bust bits next week!