Waverly "Butterbeans":
Waverly "Vintage":
Grover "Butterbeans"
Kluson "Ovals": Waverly "Butterbeans":
Waverly "Vintage":Grover "Butterbeans"
WAVERLY NOW HAS A WEBSITE. VISIT: WWW.WAVERLYTUNERS.COM
Drop-in (Belly) Bridge:
Drop-in
(Pyramid) Bridge:
Through Saddle(Belly): 
Through Saddle(Pyramid):
OM Teardrop: 
Ditson Dreadnought:
Shadow
Fishman
Lawrence
Mini-Flex
True-Tone
Highlander
Kluson,Waverly, Schaller, Grover, Sperzel, Shadow, Fishman, Lawrence,
Mini-Flex, True-Tone, and Highlander are all registered trademarks
of the respective companies.
Guitar makers of old once used ivory nuts and saddles, along with binding and other guitar trim, without reservation. For an artisan, ivory is simply one of the most wonderful materials to "work", and with which to adorn instruments. However, recently we have seen large-scale decimation of elephant populations in Asia and Africa for their ivory. The endangerment of living elephant populations is not in question. They are still being poached and their habitat is being eroded by the encroachment of ever-widening human territory. I support the BAN on importing/exporting elephant ivory, and of course poaching elephants. Currently, THERE IS NO BAN on the use of existing ivory in the U.S., just on the illegal importation of it. The fact that there remains a demand for vintage ivory parts in the guitar making/restoration trade and a small supply of vintage "legal ivory" available, indicates to me the need for limiting use in nuts and saddles. The moral issue I have is not with using very old, pre-BAN, elephant (or mammoth) ivory, but with the killing of elephants today. Overtaxing animal populations brings about an ecological imbalance, as well as a moral issue. We should learn the value of other lifeforms in our ecosystem, and adapt by beginning to use alternative materials.
I restrict the use of ivory almost exclusively to Mythic Vintage Reproductions or reproduction-quality guitars for nuts and saddles. Other materials are also there for use on fine guitars. Some are organic and some synthetic. Most make perfectly acceptable options for certain guitars: if a guitar can only sound decent with an ivory nut and saddle then it is probably not a very good guitar (play a Mythic Guitar instead!-). However a great guitar can be made greater with any number of alternative, high quality materials like the ivory of fossilized mammoths or walrus, cow bone, and the synthetic materials Tusq, Corian or Micarta. Below is a breakdown of which lines of guitars get which material.
TECHNOLOGY SERIES
Affordable Red spruce guitar
(uses standard micarta saddle)
STANDARD SERIES
a. Modern (corian saddle)
b. Vintage Package added (bone saddle)
GLORY YEARS MODELS
a. Reproduction quality (Fossil Ivory saddle)
b. Mythic Interpretation (bone, legal ivory saddle)
VINTAGE REPRODUCTIONS
Red spruce & Brazilian rosewood replica (uses legal ivory)
