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Yes it would, which is why I suggested it in a prior post:
Originally Posted by Archie
As for whether the player is biased by knowing which one is in his or her hands, it's certainly a theoretical confounder. I don't know about you, but I'm not a good enough player to be able to consistently control the tonal character of my guitar despite keeping my right hand at the same position relative to the bridge and trying hard to maintain consistency in picking. Any minor differences from trial to trial would be no more audible than they are anytime you play. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
You're right about strings. But the first video used the same strings for each of the 3 necks. The second one used two different guitars, which I also addressed in a prior post:
Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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06-01-2024 02:24 PM
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Cannot stand maple fingerboards and they are far harder to work on dealing with fret dressings. A rosewood or ebony by far easier to work with and take care of. The play better too.
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I generally prefer rosewood fingerboards (perhaps this is a visual thing more than anything else). I have a neck on my Telecaster which is roasted maple with a roasted maple fingerboard; no finish at all except a little shellac on the headstock for looks. Feels wonderful, every bit as good as the rosewood. I really like having the back of the neck unfinished. I do have two guitars with ebony fingerboards, which feels nice and perhaps coincidentally or not are my brightest sounding non-Tele guitars (Matt Cushman carved 17” arch top; Ibanez GB10).
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My earliest experience with maple fingboards was an extremely messed up early 70s strat that had all of the flaws they’re notorious for, especially the neck. It had finishing covering the lower portion of the (low, skinny) frets, which meant your fingers were in contact with the board much of the time.
I played many others with this problem. That made me think I didn’t like maple fingerboards. Between that and rosewood, no contest.
Fast forward many years to post-CBS Fenders that are actually built and finished correctly, and I’ve come to realize maple and rosewood don’t actually feel different except when bending.
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I guess I have feelings about it, but not facts.
From limited experience, I prefer rosewood. I have the impression that maple and ebony fingerboards aren't as warm. But, this isn't science. It might just be the handful of guitars I've had a chance to play for more than a quick trial.
That said, of my two most used guitars currently, one has ebony and I think the other is agathis.
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When playing on a Fender, I can always hear the difference between maple and rosewood. I prefer maple.
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Whenever this discussion surfaces I always wonder about an L5 with (unscientifically) a mix of 60/40 ebony and sea shell. I don't have one, but seems unlikely they produce a different tone when you fret on the wood VS the shell.
Does a different wood make a discernible difference in tone on something like this? And what change would a no-inlay ebony board make? What about dots?
I get that a Fender has very little inlay, but I don't play one... so far at least.
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If there is a difference in tone between one fingerboard and another I think it must from differences in density/mass, the way it couples with the fret, and resonant properties. A sliver of inlay material in the surface can’t have much effect on that. Originally Posted by ccroft
Last edited by John A.; 06-02-2024 at 09:49 PM.
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Carol Kaye told me she preferred Rosewood as fingerboard material for the warmth. I ended up choosing maple on my P Bass for the visual effect. All of my guitars have either rosewood or ebony and I just wanted to mix things up. Love the maple for tone and look, no regrets. Originally Posted by ccroft
BTW, I don't know how you identify, but your profile picture reminds me an awful lot of her. In a good way of course.
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Here is another comparison. To my ears, maple has more bass, rosewood has more high mids. It's actually consistent with the other comparison video I posted earlier in this thread. However, surprisingly, maple fretboard sounds different in the original comparison video of the thread.
Last edited by Tal_175; 06-03-2024 at 08:58 AM.
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This one's really interesting. I hear no consistent difference between rosewood and maple. The maple does sound a bit richer in some of the snippets, but the rosewood sounds a bit fuller in others. And with a few of those licks, the two are so close that I don't think I could tell one from the other. On the neck pickup without the effects, the rosewood sounds a bit more evenly balanced from lows to highs. This may be because the maple's slightly bigger highs combine with a slight midrange recession to scoop it. This player may not be as consistent in his picking and plucking as the guy who made the OP's video. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I highly doubt I'd tell the difference in sound, but I much prefer the feel of a rosewood fingerboard to a lacquered maple fingerboard. Previously I had a Gibson L6-S reissue with a lacquered maple fingerboard, and always thought it felt a little bit strange to play. It did sound great though. The entire guitar was made of maple, and it was quite a dark sounding guitar, contrary to what one would expect.
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I choose whichever one I prefer the look of on that particular guitar. Simple as
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Well, that is honest! With Fender guitars, I have tended to do the same and have preferred a rosewood fretboard primarily because I just think it looks better. I don't know that my ears are good enough to really pick out differences and sound due to the neck. Most other kinds of guitars, the choices are between rosewood and ebony; visually I tend to actually like rosewood a little better (I like the variation and grain and coloration). I have guitars with all three materials for a front board, but the rest of the instruments are so different from each other that there's no way to make a meaningful comparison about contribution to tone. As others have mentioned, I really don't like the feel of a maple fretboard with finish on top of it. My only guitar with a maple fretboard is roasted maple and doesn't need a finish, so it feels wonderful under the fingers. Originally Posted by chris32895
I remember quite a few years ago that Jim Soloway posted a video comparing the same guitar with a neck with a maple fretboard and a neck with a rosewood fretboard, IIRC. Maybe he could confirm or deny that as, unfortunately, my memory is what it used to be. My recollection of the comparison was that I thought the maple actually sounded fatter and darker than the rosewood, much to my surprise.
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I have three Strats: Originally Posted by chris32895
The black one has a maple board
The Ocean Turquoise one has a rosewood board
The Lake Placid Blue one has a roaster maple board.
They all look great, sound great and play great. I cannot compare sound as they all have different pickups, but I would bet that my ears would not hear that much of a difference, if any. So I would choose based on looks myself.
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Bu the way, Fender needs to change the name of that guitar since its color no longer even remotely resembles the color of it's namesake, Lake Placid. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
Maybe rename it after one of these? -- 10 Places Where You Can See the Bluest Water in the U.S.
"Does a different wood make a discernible difference in tone on something like this? And what change would a no-inlay ebony board make? What about dots?"
Yes, the placebo effect may be at play here, guitarists are as prone to it as anyone else - maybe more so.
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I think you're on to something. Ted and Ed basically played what was available at the time and probably didn't parse over it in the same manner an internet forum will. Originally Posted by Peter C
Julian prefers Blackguards which always have maple. And Bill Frisell plays both maple and rosewood with no clear preference.
I personally don't feel there's a notable sound difference. It's more tactile. Or even aesthetic.
And if we really want to dig in, wouldn't the neck material be more significant than the fretboard? I do know Ted Greene spoke on that and preferred chunkier maple necks on his Teles since they had better resonance.
That said, I always favored rosewood. Until I got a roasted maple on a Tele. Now I prefer that. For now. I think.
But again, it's about feel and not sound.
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You guys are mad at tonewood. All the materials in an electric guitar that affect how it resonates end up affecting the amp'd sound. This especially includes the chief materials that it's made of, the wood. There's variation within types of wood, but in general you can ballpark traits of wood types. Rosewood can have some good treble, but in general maple is snappier.
Once I swapped only the body of a strat from alder to poplar. The change was insanely drastic. Regular scooped strat pups sounded like a mid swamp.
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I love a maple board on a Strat or Tele, but I honestly don't care. Any nice guitar in my hands is going to make me happy, whether it's solid/semi/hollow or whatever. Best to have a lot of them, I think, just in case
Last edited by jim777; 06-05-2024 at 09:42 AM.
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I asked a luthier at an acoustic guitar manufacture where they build various models and use many different kinds of wood. She confirms that the wood used for the neck can influence the instruments sound but that the fretboard shouldn't (= not noticeably so).
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The number of variables that would need to be isolated to really conclusively compare the two is enormous, and I've never seen anyone come close to doing it.
I also suspect that whatever vibrational differences there are between species would be significantly overshadowed by the variation between specific pieces of wood. But again, no one has come close to scientifically studying this.
What I've never heard is anyone propose a mechanism that's causing the alleged difference. Do certain woods have resonant frequencies that amplify certain frequencies in the guitar range? Do they introduce more damping in certain frequencies? Again, no studies on why this would occur, and whether there is a noticeable difference between species rather than just different pieces of wood.
So yeah there was obviously a difference between the two clips. But do we have any reason to believe that it's because of the different wood species? Not even close.
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Next, we can debate the sound differences between an oiled maple fingerboard and a lacquered one.
Anyways, I can't see how a glued-on strip of rosewood can have a notable effect when laminated veneers on bodies don't.
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Actually, Alan Carruth has, at least as properly as he could. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
That's why I asked a luthier. But as I said somewhere above, the strings don't come into contact with the fretboard wood. So any effect on sound would have to stem from some effect of the wood on how (well) the frets do their work, or because of the structural and weight contribution the fretboard makes to the neck (which we know does have an effect on sound).What I've never heard is anyone propose a mechanism that's causing the alleged difference.
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That has to be it. The whole guitar is a resonant circuit that feeds the sound through the strings into the pickups, and probably some directly into the pickups as well microphonically. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
Yeah no, the material the electric guitar is made out of affects the amp'd sound. If it didn't there would be zero difference between the sound of a hollowbody and solidbody. Duh.
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Yes there is interactive resonance between the guitar strings and the rest of the guitar, but the question is 1. To what degree do they affect each other and 2. How much does specifically changing the wood species change that interaction?
My day job is seismic analysis of large concrete structures, which means understanding how structures respond to an exciting waveform. Similar principles, very different scales and applications haha. But the factors affecting a structure's response to excitation are it's natural frequencies, which are controlled by mass and stiffness, and the amount of damping. It seems unlikely to me that there is a substantial difference in mass and stiffness between maple and rosewood, at least one that could be tied specifically to the species vs to a particular piece of wood. There are a ton of factors that could affect damping to various degrees: the bridge, nut, tuners, frets, any joints between different materials or layers of wood, any, glue used between those layers, interaction between the truss rod and the neck, etc etc. I see no reason to believe that the difference in material damping between rosewood and maple is enough to overshadow any of these other possible sources. And for all these properties, as with any material, there will be a range of values. Two pieces of maple might be radically different, but they can still be marketed as maple. Are we sure that the value ranges of maple and rosewood don't overlap each other?
I guess my point is that these are all questions that could be studied by a material scientist via experiment or numerical model. But it seems that the highest level of testing we get is a guy comparing two different necks with who knows how many other different variables and then concluding any sound differences must be due to the most visually obvious difference. I just haven't seen anything that sufficiently controls variables to where you could be confident that wood species is the root cause of the difference.
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