Hello from Perth

[DarkMark]

Hi,
I'm not a carpenter, painter, electrician or polisher...but apart from that I'm sure I have all the qualifications required for a guitar build.
I have a ES-3 kit coming next year and as this will be my first build I'll have many ignorant questions for the good Pit Bull community.
Let me start with these ones.
What have been people's experience with the plastic nut on the guitar neck? Is replacement with a bone nut recommended?
What glues are people using to attach set necks to the body?
Thanks in advance for any advice offered. Looking forward to starting (and finishing) the build.

[Andy40]

Welcome to the forum DarkMark. I am sure you have all the qualifications, needed....enthusiasm!
I always replace the plastic nut with bone. "bone for tone"
Use Original Titebond to glue the set neck.

[FrankenWashie]

Welcome Aboard Darkmark!

[Fretworn]

Welcome DarkMark.

So far I stayed with the supplied nuts on my guitars. It is always something that you can go back to later if you really want to. From my point of view, I'd rather gain the set up skills on the supplied nuts before I spend extra cash on bone nuts.

[Dedman]

Welcome Mark.
I've used the plastic ones, bone ones and brass ones. Can say the brass ones are defiantly brighter, not a massive difference with bone BUT bone is SO much easier to adjust for set up, well worth the few dollars.

[Sonic Mountain]

Welcome Aboard DarkMark. I'll put my two cents in, I like the Tusq nuts.

But to be fair thats only in comparison to the plastic ones, I've not tried a bone or brass one yet. The biggest advantage from my point of view is how cleanly the string slides through the grooves when tuning, not stuttering or grabbing. This is also pretty important if you want to add a tremolo as a lot of the going out of tune problems stem from the string grabbing on the nut/bridge/string trees.

Tone is such a nebulous thing to talk about as there are sooo many factors that affect it, not least of which is your own personal preference. I think I can hear an improvement using the Tusq vs a normal plastic one and I've seen many people swear by the bone nuts for that reason.

[wokkaboy]

Welcome to the forum Mark, good to have another Perth builder onboard.
Take your time and you will end up with a nice axe

[DarkMark]

Thank you for the welcome and opinions everyone. Some familiar names here from my readings.
I'm tempted to replace the nut from the get go to avoid potentially damaging the finish at a later stage.
My string of choice are flat wounds and I rarely use open strings but I'll keep thinking about it.

[wokkaboy]

Hi Mark, being a first build I would use the plastic nut to set up the guitar. You can even knock it out carefully (to break the glue bond) and the string tension will leave it in place then when you are ready to replace to a bone nut just release the string tension and shape the bone nut to fit.
It will take quite a lot of massaging to get the bone nut correct, string height and nut slot widths/shape

[DarkMark]

Sounds like good advice, thanks.