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Do you agree with the statements in this video ? If not why not?

Being a noob really I'm gonna hazard a guess from looking at the neck that the guy builds classicals, and if I've understood correctly what I've read here previously there is less energy imparted from nylon strings than steel and little differences like that do add up, whereas it's less critical on steel string. I use rosewood at the moment as it's cheaper than ebony and if it sound better to then I'll stick to it, but I only build for myself and I only play steel string.

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Formerly JJH

I learn more from my mistakes than my successes

That doesn't look like a classical neck to me or one sitting in the background.

I agree that when he taps the rosewood FB it sounds nicer than when he taps the ebony FB. What he has not demonstrated is that the "niceness" of the tap yields a better sounding guitar. This is called a non-sequitur.

He's saying, taping a rosewood fingerboard sounds better than tapping an ebony FB therefore a guitar built with a rosewood FB will sound better than one built with ebony. No where does he prove that or even propose a hypothesis as to why that should be so.

Not saying he isn't right, he just hasn't proven it.

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I am no professional nor do I have much (if any) valuable experience yet, but I would personally tend to disagree. Sure the FB in itself sounds better in Rosewood than Ebony (but even then, how do you calculate "good"? What IS "good"?), but I believe that once glued to the neck it looses a lot of its resonant qualities. As Andy pointed out, he hasn't proven anything; I believe that the difference between the two simply lies in the stiffness they give to the neck, given that they both are of a different density: all that is left is to see what you want to achieve. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a stiffer neck (ebony) would help bring out the high notes, and a erm... not so dense neck (rosewood) would be more likely to enhance the basses....?

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Olivier Gauthier
Montreal, QC

When guitar players and builders start using the word "different" in place of "better" we will be "better" off.

On my latest guitar (shipped today, woo woo!) I used a beautiful old growth BRW fretboard and bridge. The separate neck assembly was as "alive" as any guitar to date, much more so than the last two necks with Ebony boards.
Of course I can't remember exactly the tone difference from one guitar to the other, they are all gone. I bet they were slightly different, though.

Better? Paaaa!

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I'm with you David.I don't see much difference in the two.They are both good in my book.If i had a choise, i would have the ebony board for the better wear quality.Even in my les pauls there isn't much difference.Mabey a little more sustain in the ebony board.

I think it's just different sounds. I remember James D'Aquisto said that with ebony, the notes don't "get lost" as easily. Maybe the density of the ebony has this affect? BRW is romanticized a whoooole lot! Yes, it is a beauty to behold. But the main reason it was used at all in the guitar business was because of it's incredible abundance at the beginning of the 20th century. Now it's a lot harder to come by. Believe it or not..... a lot of it was used up by the fragrance industry!
-John

It seems to me that unless you do the following (or some variation) it's all speculation.

I'm guessing you'd have to elevate the strings off the bridge (?remove the saddle?) and attach the string ends to something other than the guitar and pluck the string so that all sound is being transmitted via the neck. Repeat with another neck (try that with a non-bolt on neck!) and record the difference. Then make the claim.

It's a bit vague when you compare rosewood to ebony...what kind of rosewood? What kind of ebony?

I have two guitars with ebony FBs, and two guitars with rosewood; Cocobolo and Braz rosewood respectively. All instruments feel the same in terms of playabilty and I wouldn't say that it contributes a lot to the tone. It's the density of the woods that make a difference to playability and feel; and as a guitarist, I prefer the denser woods to pull off the little tricks of hammer ons, pull offs, bends, vibrato, etc, etc.

But then you have to factor in the frets' height and width too, to make a difference.

In conclusion, choose a timber that is hard wearing to cope with the rigours of playing.

wouldn't taking the fb off and putting a new one on be easier?

there was a similar thread a few months back but revoliving arround bridges. the out come was that mot ebonies (i remember that maccassar was an exception?) provide alot of acoustic dampening. this doesn't mean that ebony sounds bad, it just sounds different. i remember a few people had swapped bridges to change the tone, some going from rosewood to ebony to make the tone less agressive pingy and metalic and to smooth it out. i suppose one could try this with finger boards? if one was to joint 2 fbs, then slot then you would have 2 idential fingerboards?

at the end of the day, good wood is good wood, so use it.

thanks for the interesting topic!

jonny

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"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening happens again, happens again. Though not necessarily in that order." Douglas Adams

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the goal to get the neck/fretboard/head as neutral as possible? Thus the sound comes from the strings and body. That would make the ebony fretboard the more desirable as it contributes less coloration. I'm a real reader, I read a lot about how things work, I seem to recall reading, in more than one place, that neutrality the neck up is desired.

As David said, different perhaps, but not necessarily better.

Joe,

Only if the guitar is made in Switzerland

I think it's not "neutrality" as such, but evenness in volume and tone as you play up the neck and play the same notes across strings that is desired - at least that's what I'm after and using twin carbon-fibre rods and having the fretboard supported by the neck shaft as far up the neck as possible works for me in this regard. If you can hear/believe it then choose the fretboard wood to "colour" the tone but as Sam says don't forget playability, wear over time and how well the wood holds the frets and copes with refrets.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Ebony fret boards on violins and etc. forever.

I don't want the neck to vibrate at all.
I don't want to lose any energy with the strings moving the peghead, or the neck for that matter. In the real world such vibration will happen, but anything that stiffens the assembly is good in my book.
I would use cast iron if it weren't so bloomin' heavy.
So ebony is a staple in our shop.

Steve

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I think Allen C. posted something on this, namely,if you increase the stiffness of the neck or reduce the mass, with the overall objective of achieving a resonant neck frequency close to that of the Helmholtz frequency,that you should see an increase in the bass response.This might be a worthwhile objective to consider when deciding your choice of neck woods.

I believe you are correct and it got into even the mass of the peg head having an effect also. It's all a sum of the parts in the end isn't it? How does Madagascar Rosewood compare to Ebony?

I think this most clearly states what I was trying to say:

Are you sure that all of that adds up? Just because the neck vibrates does that necessarily mean that the guitar will sound 'worse' or quieter? Have you tried a cast iron neck and did it sound better? Folks have gotten better sound from guitars from both stiffening up and/or increasing the mass of the back and sides but they have also gotten better sound by lightening up and decreasing the mass of the back and sides. Why couldn't the same be true of necks?

I smell voodoo.

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Hey Paulick...my number 2 has a Madagascar Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. Absolutely beautiful stuff....and it most certainly has a ring to it that Ebony doesn't have. I don't want to get into the debate about which is what and so forth but this is going to be one nice guitar.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

They are different.

If you take a string and set it up between two extremely rigid connections, tighten it and tune it to a guitar frequency. Then strum the guitar string and the other string, the non-guitar string will sustain for a significantly longer period. Why? Because the string isn't losing energy to the flex of the guitar neck and the guitar soundboard through the bridge, etc. That flexing is causing the sustain to decay faster.

Thus if the neck contributes less to the decay of the sustain, there is more energy for the soundboard to project. Further, we use very hard materials for the nut and bridge for the same reason, let's not lose energy to them that we can use otherwise. A dense material in the fretboard will vibrate less, thus contribute less to the loss of energy.

The backs and sides contribute considerably less to flexing and loss of energy. However by making thiner or thicker sides and back, your instrument is tuned to a different frequency. Thus that tuning can increase or decrease the sound an instrument creates.

I have a Madagascar board and bridge blank arriving from LMI Monday for my P45. That's what I'm calling my version of the J45. Maybe it will be ready for our next meeting.

If every action is equal to an opposite reaction then how does it matter what the wood is as shouldn't the reaction be equal as far as energy is concerned? Although the stiffer denser neck may have a different result ie. vibrate less?

You sure about that? I still smell voodoo.

How do you suppose a guitar with a lead neck would sound? Lead is very dense. Or perhaps a lead saddle?

I guess I'm trying to say there's no right or wrong answer and it's bunk to try and mix and match theories because as Chris mentioned, everything works together, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering etc. to get to a final sound. Sometimes we add mass to get a better sound, sometimes we remove it. Sometimes we make things stiffer, sometimes weaker.

To use the video guys logic against him: Rosewood, especially BRW rings like a bell. Much more so than any sort of spruce. Therefore, I will get a better sounding guitar by using BRW for my top instead of spruce. We all know that isn't right for about a million reasons. Why would we project that same type of logic to necks and FBs etc.

There are plenty of mahogany necked guitars that sound great. There are also maple necked guitars that sound great but different. We're dealing with a very complex system here. You can't say for certain that losing some energy to shake the neck isn't going to pay back somewhere else in positive ways. You also can't say for certain that it will either.

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Where's Alan Carruth?