ebony or rosewood for fingerboards?

Bob Holo

Not intonation, but I guess it could theoretically affect real-world intonation by altering the harmonic profile a little, but I suspect it'd be a very small influence if anything.

There are (at least) two ways to make a good neck... one is that you make a light neck with low self-damping and tune the neck sufficiently low so that it doesn't interfere with the guitar, because after all, the zero-fret is one terminus of the string and the bridge is the other. If the terminii are vibrating in anti-phase then they will selectively comb-filter. This method is problematic because there is much more to tuning a neck than you might think. There is a subtle difference, but whether the difference is "good or bad" depends on the goal of the design, the quality of the design, and how well the design is achieved.

The other way to do it is to make a well damped high mass neck ... the goal is to keep the neck from contributing or filtering the soundboard response by rendering it largely inert. Ebony works well for this as it is dense and oily and very well damped... ebony over maple will give you a very well damped neck.

So, what's the right way? There isn't one. It depends on your goal.. and also upon the wood. Rosewoods start around 1,700 Janka and go up to nearly 2,700 Janka and within species, the variance can be extreme depending on wood quality. But light isn't necessarily bad. I've also had good success with lighter / softer well-damped woods such as Bois de Rose which has quite a nice taptone but warmer than Honduran or Brazilian or oldgrowth East Indian. The wear of the fingerboard depends largely on the player and the setup. I just got an artist's guitar back in the shop after 6 or 7 years of him making a living on it, it needs some love. He plays a lot and he plays hard and the frets are down to the nub, but I made that guitar with a tuned light neck using a Bois de Rose fingerboard to accentuate the tonal warmth of that guitar, and the fingerboard is untouched because he's playing up on the back of the frets which is where you want to be for clean fretting and good control over the tone and sustain of the guitar, so the strings never touch the fretboard.

Anyway - experiment and learn. There are many good woods for just about every part of the guitar. Many of the old midpriced GJ guitars from Mirecourt had dyed white wood fingerboards - utility grades of lemonwood and maple & etc. There are no wrong answers, just differences - and be careful... tools eat fingers, particularly when you start working hard woods like ebony and rosewood and hard stringy woods like maple which can grab at drill and router bits and cause the tools to kick.

Anyway, gotta go. Be safe. Go with ebony for your first guitars - it's more likely to give you a good result

noodlenot

Thanks for the reply, Mr. Holo. Some subtleties there are beyond my understanding, but i´ll try to grasp them when the time comes. Ebony is indeed what i´ve used so far, but feel like trying something new (not on a selmer, though - i am still building momentum to start a selmer build: lamination gives me itches!). Will probably wait, as african blackwood is such a PITA to plane by hand... man, that stuff eats plane irons for breakfast!

miguel

P.S. - living near Gilmer should give you access to some nice wood... envy!