Ebony Fretboard and its effect on tone

bopster

A bass player and I discussed fingerboard woods and tone. Brightness in the tone of a guitar can also be effected by the chosen fingerboard wood? Is this as important as the body woods?

Steveareno

Don't know if it effects tone, but my Dell Arte was my first ebony fretboard and I absolutely love the feel. An unbound ebony fretboard with plain position dots is my preference (can't deal with block inlays or binding). Even on rosewood boards, the darker the better. Dislike, light, dried out rosewood. Seems like many Gibsons have overly dry RW. Ebony probably has some beneficial effect on tone on a purely acoustic stinged instrument.
Swang on,

Jeff Moore

Supposedly ebony in a bridge or fretboard will be brighter sounding than anything but bone (a bone bridge anyway), but in acoustic instruments any effect is likely to be tiny compared to other construction details.
I recall more discussion about this among electric guitar builders perhaps because the tone is more directly related to the resonance (or not) of the woods used. Of course the resonance of wood choices is very important to acoustic instruments too, but they also have considerably more variables contributing to their sound than say a solid body electric.
I love reading about luthiery but I'm only trying to convey an impression that I've built over the years, not facts.
The difference between a rosewood and ebony fretboard on a SelMac would be pretty subtle I'd guess.
They're both quite dense and resonant.
I also think its generally accepted that wood choice in the body wood will have significantly more impact than differences in the fretboard.
Taylor guitars are made under strict guidelines such that the differences in tone wood (back and side woods) can be experienced pretty readily. They essentially make the same guitar with different tone woods (and prices) over and over. You can hardly hear the difference between two Taylors made at the same time using the same woods. You will easily hear a difference between two otherwise identical Taylors where different tone woods were used.
This won't work of course if the top woods aren't the same. But you'll get a good idea of the sound associated with tone woods by going into a place that sells a lot of Taylors.
This isn't an endorsement. I didn't care for them even when I played non-Selmac guitars, but they're well enough made to show off the exact differences I'm describing.
They don't vary the fretboard woods, that I know of, so this won't help answer your original question.