ebony fingerboard

[Steiner]

Even where the wood comes from within a log can make a measurable change within the magnitude of "difference" being discussed.

 

I like sherbert!

[smurph1]

Even where the wood comes from within a log can make a measurable change within the magnitude of "difference" being discussed.

 

I like sherbert!

Orange Sherbert is my favorite!!

[Guest mgoetting]

My Hohner headless with SDs really sounds amazingly good, and that's a minimalist setup. Now it doesn't sound as rich as my Heritages but it's not bad. It has a rosewood fingerboard and mahogany neck but no headstock and almost no body. Go figure.

 

I recently heard a video of Muddy Waters playing his 3 string guitar made out of a gas can. Somehow that worked for him. He sounded better than I can on a multithousand dollar Heritage.

 

I'm doing something wrong!

[pressure]

Not to change the subject but the quest for tone is endless when you consider what the fretboard can be mounted on!

Solid maple, solid rosewood, solid mahogany or combinations of woods in 3-piece or 5-piece necks.

Everything affects the tone of the individual guitar so get as many as you can, play the snot out of them and enjoy... at least until the drummer starts up.

[Guest mgoetting]

How to change tone:

 

1. Pluck the same note on a different string.

2. Pluck it closer to the neck or bridge.

3. Switch between finger and pick plucking.

4. Mute the strings.

5. Change strings.

6. Turn your guitar tone dial.

7. Adjust your amp.

8. Clean your ears out.

 

Certainly other things affect tone as well, but all of these seem more influential (and cheaper) than fretting over fretboards IMHO.

[Thundersteel]

I think you all need to expand the population sample size, and do some Six Sigma analysis. Utilize Process Control Charts, find the Standard Deviation, and theorize the vibrational differences and propagation delays of each wood substance in question.

 

In the meantime, I'll just "play the friggen' thing!"

[Kuz]

I can offer that when I was looking for my 575 Custom at Wolfe's and found out the finger board was Ebony instead of Roswood, Jay agreed that the Ebony would sound brighter, tighter, and more focused than Rosewood.

 

He knew I prefered Rosewood, but insisted that since the wooded bridge was Rosewood instead of Ebony, it would still have some of the warmth I like.

 

He agreed that if both the Fretboard & the bridge were ebony, then the guitar would be too bright.

 

Bottom line, when I purchased my Custom Shop Strat a month ago I had 10 Custom shop Strats that I tried. Some were maple, some were rosewood. Some were heavy, some lighter. I played 2 maple at the same weight and 3 rosewood at the same weight as the maple ones. TRUST me, you could DEFINITELY hear the difference between the Maple Strats & the Rosewood ones. BTW, they all sounded good, but I wanted the John Mayer/SRV Rosewood tone over the Eric Clapton/Buddy Guy Maple tone.

 

If you had 3 guitars, at all the same model, at similiar weight, same pickups, BUT with different fretboards (Maple, Ebony, Rosewood) and the were all being played through the same amp with the same settings.... YOU COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE (IT MIGHT BE ONLY 10-15% DIFFENCE, BUT YOU COULD HEAR IT)

[fxdx99]

I think you all need to expand the population sample size, and do some Six Sigma analysis. Utilize Process Control Charts, find the Standard Deviation, and theorize the vibrational differences and propagation delays of each wood substance in question.

 

In the meantime, I'll just "play the friggen' thing!"

 

LOL! Okay, okay! Geez! Quasi-engineer hat put away now... (bad hat - get down, stay down!).

[Guest mgoetting]

I can offer that when I was looking for my 575 Custom at Wolfe's and found out the finger board was Ebony instead of Roswood, Jay agreed that the Ebony would sound brighter, tighter, and more focused than Rosewood.

 

He knew I prefered Rosewood, but insisted that since the wooded bridge was Rosewood instead of Ebony, it would still have some of the warmth I like.

 

He agreed that if both the Fretboard & the bridge were ebony, then the guitar would be too bright.

 

Bottom line, when I purchased my Custom Shop Strat a month ago I had 10 Custom shop Strats that I tried. Some were maple, some were rosewood. Some were heavy, some lighter. I played 2 maple at the same weight and 3 rosewood at the same weight as the maple ones. TRUST me, you could DEFINITELY hear the difference between the Maple Strats & the Rosewood ones. BTW, they all sounded good, but I wanted the John Mayer/SRV Rosewood tone over the Eric Clapton/Buddy Guy Maple tone.

 

If you had 3 guitars, at all the same model, at similiar weight, same pickups, BUT with different fretboards (Maple, Ebony, Rosewood) and the were all being played through the same amp with the same settings.... YOU COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE (IT MIGHT BE ONLY 10-15% DIFFENCE, BUT YOU COULD HEAR IT)

 

Good to know.

[pcovers]

Even where the wood comes from within a log can make a measurable change within the magnitude of "difference" being discussed.

 

That was a great voice of reason.

 

 

I'm always interested when I read a matter of fact position that says maple is brighter than ebony, then I read another matter of fact post that says ebony in brighter. Then one that says rosewood is warm and another that says rosewood is brittle. Contradictions of every order of magnitude have been offered on almost every aspect of guitar materials, size, shape , etc and their so called predictable impact on tone. Blindfolded,they almost all lose their "predictability" of impact on tone.

[big bob]

I can offer that when I was looking for my 575 Custom at Wolfe's and found out the finger board was Ebony instead of Roswood, Jay agreed that the Ebony would sound brighter, tighter, and more focused than Rosewood.

 

He knew I prefered Rosewood, but insisted that since the wooded bridge was Rosewood instead of Ebony, it would still have some of the warmth I like.

 

He agreed that if both the Fretboard & the bridge were ebony, then the guitar would be too bright.

 

Bottom line, when I purchased my Custom Shop Strat a month ago I had 10 Custom shop Strats that I tried. Some were maple, some were rosewood. Some were heavy, some lighter. I played 2 maple at the same weight and 3 rosewood at the same weight as the maple ones. TRUST me, you could DEFINITELY hear the difference between the Maple Strats & the Rosewood ones. BTW, they all sounded good, but I wanted the John Mayer/SRV Rosewood tone over the Eric Clapton/Buddy Guy Maple tone.

 

If you had 3 guitars, at all the same model, at similiar weight, same pickups, BUT with different fretboards (Maple, Ebony, Rosewood) and the were all being played through the same amp with the same settings.... YOU COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE (IT MIGHT BE ONLY 10-15% DIFFENCE, BUT YOU COULD HEAR IT)

You folks are just getting stupid anal silly.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and postulate that if you had three of the exact same guitar, same woods, same pups, same boards, same everything... And you ran all three through the same amp at the same settings you could hear a difference.. what causes the difference? Who f-ing cares if it's the tone you like its good..

[Steiner]

You folks are just getting stupid anal silly.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and postulate that if you had three of the exact same guitar, same woods, same pups, same boards, same everything... And you ran all three through the same amp at the same settings you could hear a difference.. what causes the difference? Who f-ing cares if it's the tone you like its good..

 

 

Hurrumph!!!

[Guest mgoetting]

You folks are just getting stupid anal silly.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and postulate that if you had three of the exact same guitar, same woods, same pups, same boards, same everything... And you ran all three through the same amp at the same settings you could hear a difference.. what causes the difference? Who f-ing cares if it's the tone you like its good..

 

We have to talk about something, don't we?

 

If Jay can hear the difference between ebony and rosewood through an amplifier, he's way beyond me. I believe it's possible, but I can't do it.

 

So here's my experiment. I have 3 Millies, 1 DC and 2 straight 155s. All have the same strings. I A/B/C'd them- same amp, same cord, same time (within a minute anyway) They all sounded different.

 

Well, one is a DC with HRWs, so that explained that. The others have all the same specs- except one is cherry sunburst and the other is almond sunburst. So it's the stain!

 

Big Bob is right. It's metaphysical- so just enjoy.

 

Really, there are so many factors altering string and top vibrations and how a pickup senses these, the result is largely unpredictable.

[DreamKing]

Gonna have to agree with big bob here. Some people claim they can hear a difference between different fretboards. I don't believe for a second that they would be able to identify the correct fretboards if they were blindfolded and listened to diff guitars. "Oh that's obviously a brazillian rosewood board." Get outta town.

[111518]

There's an interesting article in this month's Acoustic Guitar about assessing the impact of aging and use on guitars. The author, Richard Johnston, cofounder of Gryphon Stinged Instruments, points out how powerful conventional wisdom is in shaping how people hear and assess instruments. "Even more troubling is that most testimonials comparing guitar tone result from tests where the player knows which guitar he is playing, and thus knows which guitar should sound better based on conventional wisdom. ... True, the older guitars usually win out, but in blindfold tests here at Gryphon, listeners rank the new guitars much higher than they do when they know that instrument A is worth more than ten times as much as instrument B." He goes on to explain a case of two '83 Martins from the same year, one heavily played, one rarely played, that sounded close in tone when new, and that "still sound almost identical to listeners," if they could not see the condition of the guitars.

 

I think this same problem makes it almost impossible to assess the impact of fretboards. If we know a rosewood board is warmer than a maple board ... that's what we will hear. I wouldn't argue that fingerboard wood has NO impact on tone, I'd just argue that it is very subtle, is more about mass and rigidity than resonance (next we'll be discussing the tonal properties of the steel in truss rods) and so difficult to separate from our expectation that we might as (more?) profitably question our conventional expectations as look for evidence of the difference in tone. What's interesting to me is the way guitarists want these decisions to be about tone, as opposed to market-created expectations (fashion)--and yet we all, I think, "fit" our gear to the visual expectations of our gigs and audiences.

 

We'd laugh at the idea our wives bought shoes based on comfort and durability vs. look and fashion, but then we...

(insert Pogo quote here)

[Guest mgoetting]

I do research on patients. Bias and expectation strongly affect results. We always use placebo or sham therapy as part of our research models or we could never sort out the truth.

 

There is a book written on how appearance and expectation overshadow a person's ability to discriminate good from crappy food. It's called Mindless Eating. An example of the sort of thing they might do to test guitars is get 10 cheap LPs then put different brand stickers on them. Each person would play two or three mixed in with several unaltered but different styled guitars. At the end the person would rate them all. The cheap guitars with Heritage or Gibson stickers would probably be rated much higher than the same guitar with a Walmart sticker.

 

You should read this profound book. It is on the science of marketing food, but it really is about how easily influenced we are.

[fxdx99]

Sorry, sorry, engineering hat just won't stay down. Yeh, know the psychological influence on what we think we hear. Get that. Well documented.

 

Get that we should 'just play 'em' and who cares why they sound good... yeh, get it.

 

... still curious on the data, the science, the engineering. Is it really proven that different wood from the same tree will make different tone?... that it's the body wood that causes it? Is this study/results published?

 

Just thought that by now there would be a well constructed experiment that would provide data (not people's impression) on what causes each changes in sound/voicing (as measured by frequency, resonance, response, etc). If these elements were well understood then a player could specifiy and adjust for the characteristics on voicing that was desired.

 

This thread has a lot of opinions/claims, probably most are impressions. Isn't there any real data available? Anyone aware of a published work that details a study/results?

 

Okay, Okay - yes, I'll shutup about it now and just go play it. (sigh...)

[pcovers]

Isn't there any real data available? Anyone aware of a published work that details a study/results?

 

(sigh...)

You would think. But, no. No there really isn't. The testing that has been done is very narrow with still many variables left uncontrolled for. This is why the lore and romance continues to posit every conceivable opinion as fact and every nuance of "feelings" still driving the conventional wisdom notions.

[Patrick]

This thread isn't nearly as fun as the head stock thread But I'll try to chime in anyway. Each of you are knowledgeable enough to realize that there are so many variables from guitar to guitar it would be impossible for anyone . . . unless he had a thorny crown on his head and holes in his hands, to be able to tell the difference between an ebony board and a rosewood one. It is impossible to definitively compare them . . . because it would be impossible to make 2 identical guitars, with the only exception being the finger boards. Every wood board that a guitar is made from differs from the next . . even when they are taken from the same wood billet. No glue pattern will perfectly mirror the other when assembling. No hand carved . . . or even machine carved and hand finished top will be the exact duplicate of another. Some ebony is gonna be less dense than others and similarly with the rosewood. Just too many variables.

[barrymclark]

Yep. All just personal taste. Sometimes what you have built up in your head really drives what you think it does. Not that there isn't a difference... nor am I discounting the fact that you should be happy with what you have regardless of why.

[Kuz]

OK, my final chance at this...... Oh, forget.... I'm glad you guys are not picking out my guitars for me!!!! LOL

[FredZepp]

I still subscribe to the idea that the woods make a big difference.

 

It seems that a large majority of makers are convinced of the sound changing w Rosewood/Maple/ Mahogany/ Ebony/ in different combinations... I don't think that is entirely a marketing gimmick.

 

I also believe that there is more of a variance in specific wood types now that suppliers are searching worldwide for quality lumber.

There is simply a larger variety of conditions that it is being grown in and that affects density/resonance ... the tone.

[barrymclark]

It seems that a large majority of makers are convinced of the sound changing w Rosewood/Maple/ Mahogany/ Ebony/ in different combinations... I don't think that is entirely a marketing gimmick.

It isn't a marketing gimmick at all. It absolutely changes it. The difference just means a lot more to the player than the listener.