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I\'m a professional musician, playing live and in studio, also making music for TV and advertisement. I started playing at 13, now I\'m 41, so I know a little bit about guitar stuff.
My main guitar is a Gibson ES-335. I bought this Earvana nut hoping it helps with the intonation problems that a lot of Gibson scaled guitars have. So, this is the most objective review I could come up with. I tried for almost 3-4 years the Earvana in my 335, I do really worked hard to find it enjoyable and to like it, and to get nearly a sound as rounded as with the original stock nut. But...
Fact- yes, the Earvana helps totally with the intonation problem. And as it is a selflubricated nut the strings had a more loose feel, more slinky, than the stock nut- which was bone. That means that the guitar is somehow more resonant and it plays like a breeze, bending a note is super easy. Playing chords feels great as it\'s hearable that the harmonics are more symetrical- so to speak. But....
Fact: it does change your guitar tone. As it is made from some kind of plastic material (Earvana claim that it is bone-like sounding. "Brighty" is the word used on their website) if your original nut is made of bone your guitar tone will change drastically. I went from the rounded tone of the original stock nut to a very thin one with a lot of a (hateable) spanky attack with the Earvana nut.
The downside: The tone is very thin. The Earvana was setup by my personal guitar tech whose experience is very wide and Earvana\'s nut changed the character of the whole guitar, to an unpleasant one, for me- but once again I\'m trying to be objective. Afterwards I do really tried to compensate with eq - in amps and presets, etc.- the missing Earvana\'s frequencies but it\'s an unsuccessful hassle.
Conclusion: I didn\'t recommend anyone with a bone or tusk nut to try this specific Earvana nut. There\'s plenty of options in BGP to go with. I don\'t know which would be a better option in terms of intonation improvement. That would be a task for Customer Service of BGP which btw is great.
I worked really hard for 3-4 years to like the Earvana nut soundwise. I was very confused because it worked with intonation- but at a high cost by loosing the rounded tone that an ES-335 is well knowned for.
Even though the Earvana helps with the intonation problem- sound is way more important so...- I just went back to the original uncompensated bone nut that came from Gibson. Yes, it feels kinda rustic again, but that\'s the way rock n\' roll is, doesn\'t it?
In my scale of sound values tone is more important than intonation in this specific example. Maybe Earvana needs to make these from bone, tusk, brass or whatever- rather than the plastic they are currently using.
Anyway kudos to BGP. It had been a long journey to evaluate this specific item.
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