Quote:
Originally Posted by fullerplast
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.
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+1
Also, an improper depth of the nut slot will really mess up the intonation up the neck. I'm a stickler about the string spacing too, and that emanates from the nut. I hate the E strings falling off the neck if they're too close to the edge. But if the strings are TOO close together, then open chords are a mess up at the first 3 frets.
imho, ymmv.