Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignatius
I've always believed that the moment you fret a note, you remove the nut from the equation.
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No, an improperly cut nut will do horrible things to your intonation in any fretted notes around the first four frets. It establishes your string spacing and the closeness to the edge of the fretboard for the outer strings. It determines how well your guitar stays in tune and it determines what happens to your tuning if you bend a string or use a tremolo. A guitar with a poor nut can make a guitar miserable to play.
As for isolating just the element of
tone, almost all of the tonal impact due to the material of the nut will be on the open strings. While that is important too, IMHO the relative importance of the nut cut and material goes more towards the
other elements previously mentioned.