You Asked, We Answered: Top FAQs about Our TUSQ Nuts, Saddles & Bridge Pins

Guitar makers and players from around the world agree...acoustic guitars come alive with TUSQ man-made ivory. TUSQ is simply more efficient at transferring the right vibrations and frequencies to your guitar top, resulting in big, open lows and clear, bell-like highs.

Guitar makers and players from around the world agree...acoustic guitars come alive with TUSQ man-made ivory. TUSQ is simply more efficient at transferring the right vibrations and frequencies to your guitar top, resulting in big, open lows and clear, bell-like highs.

If you're a real techy person, and want to know what's going on with string vibration and guitar tone, please see our white paper “The Science of Acoustic Guitar Tone Sound”.

Graph Tech Guitar Labs has the largest selection of Nuts and Saddles in the world. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about our TUSQ Nuts, Saddles, and Bridge Pins:

What is TUSQ made of?
TUSQ is a proprietary material which is precision engineered under high pressure and heat. It is specifically formulated to deliver the right frequencies with the optimum transfer rate to the top of your guitar every time. Because of its formulation and manufacturing process, TUSQ is rich in tone and harmonic content, beautiful to work with and consistent.

How is TUSQ different from any other material (bone, micarta, and corian) used in nuts and saddles?
TUSQ is a very rigid, resonant material. It increases a guitar’s harmonic content by up to 200% in some frequencies. More of the right harmonics results in a richer tone, pristine highs and big, open lows. It's like the difference in hearing a 6-piece choir singing a chord to a 18-piece choir singing a chord. Secondly, it’s a consistent material, from piece to piece and within each piece, allowing every note you play to sound just as clear and full as the next. In comparison, bone has natural grains, which cause dead spots. These dead spots can dampen certain strings, notes or frequencies on a guitar balance. While micarta and corian are a lot more consistent and cost-wise very low for manufacturers, they just don’t have the musicality or harmonic richness of TUSQ.

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