Lounge Primate - Posted - 03/31/2025:  15:43:30

Some of you may remember maybe as long as 20 years ago there was a discussion on the old Reso-Nation forum about brass spider cone tension screws. Some claimed they provided better tone than stainless tension screws.



Does anybody remember if this was pure hocus-pocus, or if brass has its merits?



I’m installing a new cone and found an old box in the back of my guitar closet that had an old cone, a spider, and several brass and several stainless tension screws.



Any opinions? Any proof? Splitting frog hairs?

Edited by - Lounge Primate on 03/31/2025 15:46:00

docslyd - Posted - 03/31/2025:  18:09:26

....probably as small as frog's hair. At least it's something you can "A/B" without dismantling the guitar. Just unthread one screw and insert another while keeping the string tension on. Make sure the head is small enough to clear the access hole in the coverplate.

Tom Jr. - Posted - 04/01/2025:  06:03:41

I don't know if it helps but there was a quote fairly recently on here about a good setup being a result of a bunch of little things. That may be one of the little things.

MarkinSonoma - Posted - 04/01/2025:  12:15:50

I vaguely recall the discussion on Reso-Nation and I vaguely recall that the results of an A/B between steel and brass were well...vague. 

As in subtle.

Check this out: Beard sells steel tension screws for one dollar. They used to also have brass. Maybe Paul decided at some point that the difference was indeed so subtle that there was no point in stocking both. 

 

Then I went to the Banjo Ben Clark store and they stock both steel and brass screws that they say are from Beard. And the price is only 40 cents - your choice of either. Banjo Ben must have bought a boatload from Beard at some point. 

RezBluez - Posted - 04/01/2025:  16:20:11

The brass ones from beard aren’t really brass, more like white metal with a brass coating. I tried one and it wasn’t very good, if you can get a solid brass screw it may make a very small difference.

docslyd - Posted - 04/01/2025:  16:29:04

Me thinks that the part of the cone which receives the screw (rivet/nut-sert) is the least resonant and the majority string vibration travels through the spider legs, not the screw. Intuitively, the significance would seem less voluminous than this post....