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I started playing the guitar in the early 90s. My teacher/mentor handed me a nice Bingenheimer Kortmann hollow 335ish guitar (german guitar builders) with a shiny, super black and dense ebony fretboard that I played for years.
Everytime I saw a guitar with an ebony FB I was fascinated by the shine, density, blackness etc.
But something seemed to change. Ten years ago I realised that the ebony FBs from the Ibanez Artcore line did not have the shine and density like the ones I knew from my youth.
Just cheaper woods I thought...
But:
Today I visited the Sadowsky Site, to look at the Frank Vignola signature guitar and was shocked to see that the FB had the same apearance as the Artcores.
Not black, more dark chocolate. Not dense, more with open pores. Not shiny, more matte etc.
That led me to open this thread. Does anybody know what happened to ebony? Is ist rare today? Or just a matter of cost cutting?
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04-12-2023 08:07 AM
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My understanding is that ebony is a varied wood in appearance. Each log that is harvested will have sections that are the pure deep black that we associate with traditional ebony, but will also contain sections that have brown striping and varying degrees of density. For a long time, only the purest and densest black sections were used while the rest of the logs were discarded, but over time, people began to appreciate the variation of colors and patterns in the previously discarded logs. As to whether this was done because of changes in market preferences, cost cutting measures, or both, I don't know.
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This may be of interest: Ebony Project | Taylor Guitars
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Ebony is one of the hardest, densest and slow growing trees on the planet. It's unique. It doesn't float. It is limited in where it grows and everybody wants it.
Most of what has been out there on mid and lower grade is in fact not ebony (there are different kinds of real ebony but these are not) but "ebonized", dye impregnated, stabilized or by some magic made to be black and appear close grained.
There are synthetics, which I happen to like, that look and act closer to ebony than many dyed woods and the added benefit of not shrinking, cracking, or loosening around fret tangs.
Stuff like real ebony took hundreds of years to make and it got cut down and made into all sorts of stuff that lasted 10 years and got thrown out. It's like ivory used to be: Billiard balls to piano keys. The stuff doesn't just grow on a tree.
Good cured, straight and stable ebony. Yeah, gets harder to get every day.
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Chinese's nouveau rich had ebony and all the rosewood cut down and turnt into bedroom sets. Most ebony has never been solid black, most ebony is striped. Even the Gabon. There is less to choose from now so solid black pieces will be rarer. I don't find anything wrong with a nice piece of striped Macassar myself. It's beautiful, dense, and can be polished to a shine with fine grit sandpaper all the same.
And God bless Bob Taylor for doing what he's doing. Heard about it a few years back. Not a big Taylor guitar fan but big respect for actually putting money where his mouth is. Awesome.
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The shiny completely black fretboards on guitars are usually dyed ebony to remove the lighter streaks. The natural ebony look has become more popular in the last 10 years, to the point that some companies like Kiesel charge extra for slabs of ebony showing more figuring than is typical.
Ecological concerns aside, Richlite looks and feels very close to the shiny uniformly black fretboards of old. If I were having a new guitar built that's what I would use.
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Thank you guys for teaching me. My apologies for Sadowsky!
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<< Everytime I saw a guitar with an ebony FB I was fascinated by the shine, density, blackness etc. >>
The best qualities of ebony (Diospyros genus) are gone a long time ago, talking about the quality of wood texture and uniform density. Some stuff from Ceylon or Madagaskar was really great, that is to say, after a natural drying time of 10 and more years.
(Natural) shine and (supernaturally uniform) blackness? Forget about that, the world is not always what it seems: in by far most cases violin and guitar makers, companies anyway, help make that happen, at least for the last 50 or 60 years! Violin makers are much more concerned to get the good stuff, since the strings get in full and direct contact with the fingerboard.
Cheap black hair dye is said to work, some simply use shoe cream ... but there are many usable stains and dyes and ways of polishing to get some shine and uniform blackness:
stain fretboard black - YouTube
Last edited by Ol' Fret; 04-15-2023 at 12:31 PM.
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I have played a few richlite fretboards. They seemed pretty nice to me. I would rather have a good piece of dense wood then one with a particular color, or a less dense dyed piece of wood. I think it has to do with the feel of playing. I am not sure how much tone effect there is. I also wonder if inlays have any impact of tone. Who knows? Maybe I should search our Warmoth vids and see how much impact a fretboard has on tone. Different fretboards demand different focuses on technique.
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I'm probably off a little (depending on what source one reads) but if I recall correctly, President Obama visited Chris Martin of Martin Guitars. Martin informed Obama about some practices of Gibson Guitar, a competitor of Martin's (obviously). The Amended Lacey Act kicked in.
Apparently, Gibson was importing the ebony without having at least a little bit of finishing/manufacturing done overseas (even though the locals weren't iterested in making, or even partially making fretboards, they had other more profitable pursuits, like the offshoring of US jobs.). The Lacey act had/has some protectionism in it.
Fish Game and Wildlife raided Henry J's Gibson Guitar Company, with machine guns drawn. Henry J. was a known Republican. Gibson was fined and for one, started using less uniform looking ebony (I have a Crimson Shop guitar from that period) and Richlite, which is synthetic. Gibson started using more uniform looking ebony at some point, though. Many never stopped, I'm not sure how/why.
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About 20 minutes away from me is an Indian fellow, Gulab Gidwani, who supplied the ebony to Gibson before the Kalamaxoo plant closed.
I went there once and was blown away by the quantity and quality of ebony in that warehouse. I haven't been there in 30 yrs but I see he's still in business selling ebony and other exotic hardwoods.
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It's still available and it can be found if you're willing to pay the disproportionate price curve that wood has experienced. I don't know what the back supply is but I do know that as a luthier, I can get it but many factours, price, quality, personal preference... dissuade me from tapping into that already depleted resource.
Originally Posted by wintermoon
Yeah it was plentiful. I worked at Ibanez and in that warehouse alone, if everything that claimed it had an ebony fingerboard had real ebony on it, I could see how even an enormous stockpile of that wood could be depleted in under a year.
There was a time when ebony was so plentiful that one could use it on anything. There was a time when lobster was so plentiful that there were laws against how land owners couldn't serve it to their hired help (it was considered fertilizer as it was mulched into the ground for the plants).
You can still get lobster but it's not cheap enough to throw away. You can still get ebony but a century of world's guitar makers putting it on anything has taken a toll on the world's supply.
Just look at the history of Brazilian Rosewood. Once so plentiful people cut logs of it and paneled their offices and conference rooms in it. You would find chess boards in toy stores that had Brazilian rosewood tiles on it. You can find it now but it's a very different story.
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One of the things that happened was massive over cutting of both ebony and rosewood in Madagascar for many years until both were endangered. My recollection is that the government in the late 90's and early 2000's were cutting and selling as much as they could jut to maintain a supply of foreign currency.
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Un-dyed macassar ebony per Griffin Exotic Wood of Grand Junction, Colorado, US:
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I love te look of undyed Macassar Ebony. Originally Posted by Sam Sherry
Un-dyed macassar ebony per Griffin Exotic Wood of Grand Junction, Colorado, US:
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Yes, if I'm not mistaken, PRS uses that on their Private Stock. Very dramaitic. Originally Posted by Sam Sherry
Un-dyed macassar ebony per Griffin Exotic Wood of Grand Junction, Colorado, US:
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Thanks Jim. So where do things stand now? Is ebony engadangered? Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
How is it that Gibson starting using uniformly black ebony again? How is it that many luthiers never stopped? (I won't name them, nor am I implying that they violated the Lacey Act, ever.)
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Does Gibson make any claim about it being undyed? If not that's probably the answer. Bob Taylor made three very important points: first that in a single tree, probably less than 10% of the wood is actually black; second that the other 90% was left to rot on the forest floor; and third that other than color, there is no difference between striped ebony and black ebony. Originally Posted by Jazzjourney4Eva
BTW, truly black ebony is still available, it's just very expensive. As for whether it's endangered, I would assume that the answer is yes but I have no idea whether it's still under any restrictions. As a species there are lots of natural products that we seem to be content to use until they are simply gone. Ebony certainly wouldn't be the first, nor is it likely to be the last.
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The details are pretty straightforward. Gibson imported unfinished woods from India that Indian law did not allow to be exported. I haven't seen any proof that Taylor instigated it, but Bob Taylor has said that it's not that hard for a guitar company to work within the rules to get materials that are needed.
Gibson Guitar becomes cause celebre for conservatives - Los Angeles Times
Here are the details of the settlement. IMO it was a mistake for Henry J to "go to the mat" on this. Sure he became a celebrity for the antiregulation crowd. Apparently he didn't know how to run a guitar company profitably though. And Gibson did eventually settle with the government, probably after spending many more millions in legal fees than they ever lost from the wood.
Gibson Guitar Corp. Agrees to Resolve Investigation into Lacey Act Violations | OPA | Department of Justice.
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Ah. so no new logging of ebony from Madagascar since 2006, but one could/can buy fingerboards if they’re not blanks and if the wood was harvested “pre-ban” like Brazilian? So unless Madagascar has a lot of pre-ban ebony just sitting there, one has to look elsewhere, or will, when it runs out. Something like that. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
And I recall that Henry did run the Gibson Guitar business profitably, aside from other “leadership style” aspects. It was his hedge bet into electronic “lifestyle” investments that were a failure and wrecked the whole thing. A pity.
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On the dye question, I don’t know. I have one particular guitar where there was NO dye though, I can tell you that. After that, maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just decided to buy the legal way, pay more, and “pass the savings on to the customer”, lol. Like all the big buck luthiers who never made a sound. Despite all that, a Legrande still costs less than a Manhattan or Monarch. (I’m a fan of all three, BTW). Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
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Like everything else, there are strengths and weakness to any theory, idea, practice, organizing principle. The difficult thing is to let go of preconceived ideologies and look for honest solutions. In my limited experiences, solutions typically make everyone a little happy and a little unhappy. However, that is only if people can be honest with themselves. I do not take that for granted.
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You are correct. Everything I’ve read said that the guitar part of the brand was profitable. I think he did a lot of good things for the guitar manufacturing and kept archtops going much longer than perhaps others would have. Originally Posted by Jazzjourney4Eva
I have a 175 and 135 from the Henry J era. Both excellent guitars. Both have rosewood fingerboards.
I don’t have a strong beef about Henry J, it just seems that the company had an issue with the ebony and he got a burr under his saddle about it, then when politicos started calling him a hero he let it go to his head.
He actually said about the Tea Party “they use me and I use them.” In the end I don’t see how Henry or the company profited from his position.
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Well they didn't, it's a fact. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
I remember those years. Tons of beautiful archtops at a good number of dealers, whenever one wanted. Makes on wonder what's so hard about getting it going again. A gutsy buyer, I guess.
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What's hard about getting it going again is a limited number of people that can pay $10,000+ for a guitar, which is what it would take for a profitable Gibson archtop guitar made in America. And a more sensible program for dealers; as I understand it, the minimum purchase for a Gibson dealer at wholesale was enormous. Most music stores cannot afford to sit on tens of thousands of dollars of inventory for months or years, waiting for an archtop enthusiast to come along and buy it. There just aren't that many of us, even among jazz players anymore- I see Telecasters, Stratocasters and semi-hollow guitars more often than I see archtops on gigs.
I was looking around in a desultory fashion for a 16 inch non-cutaway arch top guitar, not seriously planning to buy one but really liking how they look. I ran across one posted from IIRC Bill Comins for $27,000. This is a limited market instrument, brand new and made in the past few years. Ken Parker archtops are something like $30,000, John Monteleone too. If they can build 'em and sell 'em, more power to 'em! They make the prices for vintage 16 inch Alphonse look pretty darn reasonable. Or the C74 Kalamazoo over in the For Sale section, which is a screaming deal.
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