Effects of Fretboard Material on Tone?

[jasaco]

I know this is a naïve question but -- hey! -- I'm naïve!

Can someone please explain why the material of the fingerboard (ebony, rosewood, etc.) should make a difference in the tone produced by the guitar? I'm thinking that the vibrating string only contacts the fret wire and the bridge. The fingerboard is underneath the string, not making any direct contact at all. So why would it affect tone?

Thanks.

J.

[rpguitar]

It is a component of the neck's construction, and is directly below the entire vibrating length of string along the neck. Different woods have different density and reflective (sound) characteristics, in addition to stiffness, so it does make a difference. Ever played a 335/339 vs. a 355, 347, or 359? Rosewood and ebony definitely have distinct tonal characteristics. Same with rosewood and maple as evidenced in Fender guitars.

[jasaco]

OK, so the sound gets modified by the reflection off the fingerboard and that modified sound goes to the pickup. I guess that makes sense. Thank you.

p.s. To answer your question, no, I've not had the opportunity to play those guitars but I don't doubt that the fingerboard does affect tone.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Setting tone aside, there's a tactile feel difference. I have never bonded with maple fretboards on Teles. When I had my T-style made, I upgraded to ebony. Smoo-ooth!

[customxke]

String never contacts the soundboard, and yet the soundboard makes a huge difference.

[coolvinny]

I really can't tell the difference in terms of tone, but maybe that's just me.

[Jabberwocky]

We love to romanticise it today but I feel that instrument makers chose either ebony or rosewood as fretboard material more out of tradition, cost, functionality and "visual interest".

Ebony was traditionally used for bowed string instruments and ebony being homogeneously black (back when black ebony was relatively easy to find and pre-CITES) and hard-wearing and smooth was used for the top of the line guitars. Brazilian Rosewood was cheap and plentiful way back when (before deforestation and CITES) and so it was used on second-tier instruments. It is also less hard-wearing than ebony. Its bands of light and dark wood was also considered a flaw compared to the much harder to find homogeneous austere black ebony.

I surmise that the wood was used more as a means of separating the top tier instruments from the second-tier. Tonal quality was the least of their concerns. Any tonal subtleties that arise are accidental.

A guitar is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The sound of a guitar depends on how the materials are chosen and put together. That is not to say that there are no differences between kinds of wood. There certainly are. But between kinds of wood that share nearly the same physical attributes and used in a small length as a fretboard, I doubt if I can hear the differences in terms of tone. Just having a Brazilian Rosewood fretboard isn't going to impart magical tones because it could well be a lousy piece of Brazilian.

I have a 39 L10, 47 L12 and 53 Super 300 all with Brazilian Rosewood. I look lustily at the L5s and Super 400s of the same era with their ebony boards and wish mine had ebony instead. Of course, if you are a Les Paul Standard slinger, you would kill for a board of Brazilian.

Smooth black ebony simply looks like a better more luxurious material side by side of Brazilian Rosewood or any other rosewood, in my estimation.

On an archtop guitar, I will almost always look for an ebony fretboard just because I like the homogeneous blackness and feel of ebony.

Soundwise, I cannot reliably tell. Varies from guitar to guitar. But perhaps you can.

[jasaco]

This thread is becoming more interesting than I originally anticipated... Thanks, guys.

[mr. beaumont]

Difference in tone is pretty negligible, if you ask me (neck might matter more than fingerboard...)

Feel difference can be remarkable. Nothing worse than a dried out rosewood fretboard...yuck.

[wintermoon]

The vast majority of vintage Epiphones [pre-Gibson] have Brazilian boards, though Gibson did use ebony on their higher end instruments

[Chimera1to1]

I feel a blind listening test coming on;-)

[jasaco]

I'd like to hear from some of the builders on the Forum...

[DRS]

Fingerboard "tone" is one of those things nobody agrees on. Many swear they hear a difference but it is practically impossible to compare a guitar with a rosewood fingerboard to the same guitar with a maple or ebony fingerboard. You can compare a strat with a maple board to a strat with a RW board, but any tonal differences can come from other things like the body wood, neck wood, or pick up variances. Some guys will tell you RW is darker, others swear RW is brighter. I generally like the feel of RW or ebony over maple but I have a maple board Tele that is finished in tung oil and it feels just as good as my RW and ebony guitars. Personally, when I see people paying a $2-3000 premium for a reissue Les Paul with a brazilian RW board (as opposed to an indian RW board), I think that that is crazy. People talk about a zing or a zang with a brazilian RW board not present with an indian RW board. I think it's crazy especially as so many of these guys use overdriven Marshall, Boogie, or dumble-like amps. Who can possibly hear a difference with that amount of gain?

[Jim Soloway]

Over the years we built a lot of very similar guitars with small variations. It gave me at least some opportunity to try to isolate the effects of top woods, pickup and fingerboards with at least some of controls. Given enough tests, I felt that some pretty strong trends showed on a fairly consistent basics. The difference between ebony and rosewood was one of those. Ebony had a consistently faster attack than a similar guitar with a rosewood board with a stronger fundamental and weaker overtones.

[jasaco]

Jim, what does "attack" mean in the case of a piece of wood that does not contact the string? Please explain. Thanks.

[fumblefingers]

the string contacts the fret AND the fret board, does it not? how light are you pressing anyway? I mean, what are we playing? scalloped fret boards or sitars?

[jasaco]

the string contacts the fret AND the fret board, does it not? how light are you pressing anyway? I mean, what are we playing? scalloped fret boards or sitars?

Well, yes, it does contact the fretboard too, but only BEHIND the fret, which I have been assuming is irrelevant to the sound, since it is muted out by the finger itself. But maybe that assumption is wrong...?

[Jim Soloway]

Jim, what does "attack" mean in the case of a piece of wood that does not contact the string? Please explain. Thanks.

It does't matter if the string makes contact with the fingerboard. The string is attached to the the guitar and it causes the entire instrument to vibrate. Each piece vibrates at it's own frequency and contributes to the overall response of the guitar. Take a look at videos of Paul Galbraith, the 8-string classical player. He plays the guitar like a cello with a stem coming out of the bottom of the instrument. That stem sits on a second large sound box which sit on the floor. The vibrations transfer from the guitar to the metal stem and then transfer to the sound box which acts like a purely acoustic amplifier.

As for the "attack", rather than thinking in terms of a guitar, think in terms of mallet instruments. It's much more obvious. If you use a mallet on a set of vibraphones, the metal bars ring in a very complex way. This is then manipulated through a long tube. The result is a very complex sound that builds fairly slowly and sustains for a long time. The process by which that note builds is the attack. Now take the same alley and hit a wooden bar on a marimba. The result is a much simpler note that reaches it's full complexity very quickly. It is a less complex note but one that has a much sharper attack with much less sustain. That's the same process. Ebony is a wood that rings a fairly simple note very quickly. So is walnut. Rosewood rings less quickly and creates a more complex note. Spruce creates a much more complex note that either. That's why it's popular for use as a top in an acoustic guitar where you want much more nuance. If you substitute maple for spruce in the top, you get a simpler note that develops more quickly and yet neither the maple nor the spruce make contact with the string.

[rpguitar]

Put another way, we are not talking about the attack of physically hitting something, like the attack of a pick striking the strings. We are talking about the Attack component of ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release), which is standard terminology in physics for describing the characteristics of a sound's envelope; i.e. how it would be graphed on paper or displayed on an oscilloscope.

Sorry, you asked...

[fumblefingers]

It does't matter if the string makes contact with the fingerboard. The string is attached to the the guitar and it causes the entire instrument to vibrate. Each piece vibrates at it's own frequency and contributes to the overall response of the guitar. Take a look at videos of Paul Galbraith, the 8-string classical player. He plays the guitar like a cello with a stem coming out of the bottom of the instrument. That stem sits on a second large sound box which sit on the floor. The vibrations transfer from the guitar to the metal stem and then transfer to the sound box which acts like a purely acoustic amplifier.

As for the "attack", rather than thinking in terms of a guitar, think in terms of mallet instruments. It's much more obvious. If you use a mallet on a set of vibraphones, the metal bars ring in a very complex way. This is then manipulated through a long tube. The result is a very complex sound that builds fairly slowly and sustains for a long time. The process by which that note builds is the attack. Now take the same alley and hit a wooden bar on a marimba. The result is a much simpler note that reaches it's full complexity very quickly. It is a less complex note but one that has a much sharper attack with much less sustain. That's the same process. Ebony is a wood that rings a fairly simple note very quickly. So is walnut. Rosewood rings less quickly and creates a more complex note. Spruce creates a much more complex note that either. That's why it's popular for use as a top in an acoustic guitar where you want much more nuance. If you substitute maple for spruce in the top, you get a simpler note that develops more quickly and yet neither the male nor the spruce make contact with the string.

Interesting. Of course when one is fretting they are pressing on the fretboard, so doesn't that change how the board wood vibrates? In other words wouldn't it vibrate more on an open string(s)? And if so wouldn't the stiffness or resiliency of the wood also come into play?

[Woody Sound]

Think of it this way: One end of the string vibrates on the bridge, which is attached to the top. The other end of the string vibrates on the fret, which is attached to the fingerboard.

[jasaco]

Jim, that's a great explanation. Thanks very much. It's what I would call the "blooming" of the note. Not a very technical term, I realize, but works for me. Thanks again.

Woody, you make a good point. Thanks.

[Jim Soloway]

Interesting. Of course when one is fretting they are pressing on the fretboard, so doesn't that change how the board wood vibrates? In other words wouldn't it vibrate more on an open string(s)? And if so wouldn't the stiffness or resiliency of the wood also come into play?

Probably and open notes do ring much more freely than fingered notes. That being said, I spent most of the last 12 years or so playing on and producing guitars with 6100 frets which are so large that the string almost never comes into contact with the fingerboard and the differences between boards was still readily apparent.

[fumblefingers]

Think of it this way: One end of the string vibrates on the bridge, which is attached to the top. The other end of the string vibrates on the fret, which is attached to the fingerboard.

no, I got that.

the point was made by a guitar maker that different fret board woods vibrate differently and that's why they DO sound different (as opposed to what laymen were saying earlier in the post - they were saying that fret board wood didn't affect sound, and that it was only about feel and appearance etc.)

well, luthiers also inform us that pressure on a top impacts how it "moves", or vibrates, and hence how the instrument sounds. too much pressure on the top and the sound is dampened etc., etc.

so, when one presses on a fret board they are likewise pressing on something that vibrates and hence impacts sound - according to the guitar maker. so mine was a subtle point, and it was that the resiliency of the wood and hence how it responds to pressure is another sound affecting variable, no matter how small.

[Jim Soloway]

so, when one presses on a fret board they are likewise pressing on something that vibrates and hence impacts sound - according to the guitar maker. so mine was a subtle point, and it was that the resiliency of the wood and hence how it responds to pressure is another sound affecting variable, no matter how small.

I don't think it's a subtle point at all. This is just my opinion as a player but I think that a light touch with the fretting hand will produce a very different (and richer) sound than a much heavier hand. And it's not just the pressure on the fingerboard. I think that a lot of players choke the neck applying much more pressure than is needed on both the front and back and that prevents the guitar from ringing out as much as it can.