What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

[wickenspoet]

Someone told me today that fretboard wood doesn't matter, as far as tone goes, because technically, the strings don't touch the wood anyway.

Ebony, Rosewood, Maple... it doesn't really matter. He said the type fretboard wood should only affect how a guitar "feels" on your fingertips, but that it makes no difference as far as sound is concerned, especially for a bolt-on guitar.

Is there any truth to this way of thinking?

 

[ExplorersRock]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Someone told me today that fretboard wood doesn't matter, as far as tone goes, because technically, the strings don't touch the wood anyway.

Ebony, Rosewood, Maple... it doesn't really matter. He said the type fretboard wood should only affect how a guitar "feels" on your fingertips, but that it makes no difference as far as sound is concerned, especially for a bolt-on guitar.

Is there any truth to this way of thinking?

Well, I'm no scientist, and this is only my opinion, but HOGWASH!!!:cussing:

The nut is embedded in the fretboard, so the strings are touching it the same way that they are touching the body. Personally I did an experiment a year or so ago. I played two identical strats back to back. Only difference? One had a rosewood board and the other had a maple board. The rosewood was warmer and smoother while the maple was bright and treble-happy. I've done this experiment several times since with the same result. YMMV, but to me, the wood is as important to the tone as the body wood or neck wood.

 

[FretFire]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

I feel like the neck woods may actually matter the most. I got rid of my maple-necked strat pretty quickly one my all-rosewood-necked tele came along. Both were alder-bodied, but the strat was just brighter and more piercing. It had been through countless pickup changes over the years, but once I heard that tele it was gone.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Often fretboard material is the difference between a dark/dead guitar and a light/lively guitar. I have a strat with a swamp ash body and I had a rosewood neck on it for a long time. It was dark and muddy until I put a maple neck on it. Then it became the most lively sounding guitar I own. I pissed away $100's of dollars worth of pickups in that thing before changing the neck. Since I changed the neck every pickup I put in it sounds good.

 

[phil_104]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Well, technically, when you really think about it : If you are fretting a note, and the string is resting on the fret, the first wood to receive the vibration is going to be the one with the fret resting in it, so the fretboard. So technically, the vibration is received (partially at least) through this material, so it should have some effect.

I've always found that I can tell the difference in a strat. I like the feel of maple best, but I always find rosewood strats have a touch much warmth.

 

[TheLivingDead]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Well, technically, when you really think about it : If you are fretting a note, and the string is resting on the fret, the first wood to receive the vibration is going to be the one with the fret resting in it, so the fretboard. So technically, the vibration is received (partially at least) through this material, so it should have some effect.

I've always found that I can tell the difference in a strat. I like the feel of maple best, but I always find rosewood strats have a touch much warmth.

This all around.

 

[JOLLY]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

because technically, the strings don't touch the wood anyway.

They do when I play.

 

[BEACHBUM]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Someone told me today that fretboard wood doesn't matter, as far as tone goes :fingersx:

Whoever told you that is giving out very good advice. My ears tell me that on a solid body guitar all of this talk about fret boards, body wood, bridges, tuners, pick guards and what kind of screws are used on the strap buttons effecting tone is just silly conjecture that is useful for filling pages on forums but that's about it. 99.99999% of tone comes from player, pups, and amp. Simply using a different pick will change your tone far more than any effect body and neck woods can make. Having said all of that the fact is that none of this can be proven one way or the other and the question can only be answered by one person. You.

 

[Ayrton]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Well, technically, when you really think about it : If you are fretting a note, and the string is resting on the fret, the first wood to receive the vibration is going to be the one with the fret resting in it, so the fretboard. So technically, the vibration is received (partially at least) through this material, so it should have some effect.

I've always found that I can tell the difference in a strat. I like the feel of maple best, but I always find rosewood strats have a touch much warmth.

This basically...

The sound any guitar makes is a based largely on how the wood reacts/vibrates. The frets are pressed into wood that be soft or hard, and that has an effect on sound.

HOWEVER, everything about any guitar effects how it sounds. The weight of the tuning keys, the fret material, the density of the fretboard wood, how the neck is attached, the wood used to make the body, the thickness of finish, the bridge, blah, blah,blah...

You get the idea.

The bottom line is how it sounds to your ears.

 

[astrozombie]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

if fretboard wood didn't matter, i would use guitars with plastic fretboards.

 

[dominus]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Someone told me today that fretboard wood doesn't matter, as far as tone goes, because technically, the strings don't touch the wood anyway.

By that logic, the body wood matters even less, because the strings never touch the body.

 

[MetalManiac]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Whoever told you that is giving out very good advice. My ears tell me that on a solid body guitar all of this talk about fret boards, body wood, bridges, tuners, pick guards and what kind of screws are used on the strap buttons effecting tone is just silly conjecture that is useful for filling pages on forums but that's about it. 99.99999% of tone comes from player, pups, and amp. Simply using a different pick will change your tone far more than any effect body and neck woods can make. Having said all of that the fact is that none of this can be proven one way or the other and the question can only be answered by one person. You.

This is sooo wrong! Im guessing beachbum is using digital amps.
Granted, on modern guitars with tight articulate high gain amps, the tone is pretty one dimensional, and you arent going to get much variance , but with a high end classic style Les Paul, Strat , or Tele guitar, or a special made guitar, or an old guitar, the difference is enormous. Great duncan pickups will quickly shut you up about how there is no difference in neck tonewoods, but only through a responsive organic tube amp with classic tone.

 

[tonello]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

I don't know how much I believe in tone woods. I think the number one thing with most people is pickups.

I've talked to other players (players mind you), and they said that Gibson are darker than Fenders because of body woods. When I said to them that Gibsons also have humbucker pickups and don't mount their pickups through a pickguard, the guys said that HUMBUCKERS shouldn't sound much different than SINGLE COILS.

I know they're idiots, but IMO, these are the kinds of people who make big deals about tone woods. I think that any player will hear what they want to hear. If you want to hear a rosewood fretboard guitar being darker than a maple fretboard guitar, then that's what you'll hear.

 

[jacksontrader]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

There wouldn't be any options for fretboard woods if there was no difference.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Many people have mistakenly believed that what the guitar is made of makes no difference. The wood has its own 'resonance' which will emphasise and dampen various frequencies depending on its structure.
Below is a link to wood types for body and fretboard with Suhr strats. Its quite easy to hear the difference.

http://www.petelacis.com/2010/07/08...p-the-definitive-comparison-with-audio-clips/

 

[verbotenco]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Whoever told you that is giving out very good advice. My ears tell me that on a solid body guitar all of this talk about fret boards, body wood, bridges, tuners, pick guards and what kind of screws are used on the strap buttons effecting tone is just silly conjecture that is useful for filling pages on forums but that's about it. 99.99999% of tone comes from player, pups, and amp. Simply using a different pick will change your tone far more than any effect body and neck woods can make. Having said all of that the fact is that none of this can be proven one way or the other and the question can only be answered by one person. You.

Thanks! Finally a sensible fellow. Wood matters only if the guitar is acoustic. Pickups and amps dominate more in electrics. As soon as the strings are plucked the sound will be picked up by the pickups and transferred to the amp before reverberating throughout the body and neck. And when you use considerable amount of effects, the impact of the wood factor declines even more considerably.

 

[verbotenco]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

There wouldn't be any options for fretboard woods if there was no difference.

Visual aesthetics and pride are also important. Some people like the look of maple, some like rosewood. With ebony or bird's eye maple fretboard you can go around and brag about it.

 

[verbotenco]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

This is sooo wrong! Im guessing beachbum is using digital amps.
Granted, on modern guitars with tight articulate high gain amps, the tone is pretty one dimensional, and you arent going to get much variance , but with a high end classic style Les Paul, Strat , or Tele guitar, or a special made guitar, or an old guitar, the difference is enormous. Great duncan pickups will quickly shut you up about how there is no difference in neck tonewoods, but only through a responsive organic tube amp with classic tone.

I have several guitars with different kind of woods, they all have SD or Dimarzio and sound crap played through a Boss SD-1, but sound majestic through a Digitech Grunge. Obviously, woods don't matter here.

 

[DarkMatter]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

I went from an all maple neck to a walnut and ebony neck on my strat and the difference in sound was substantial. No other changes were made at that time.

Woods matter.

 

[Ayrton]

Re: What if fretboard wood doesn't matter?

Thanks! Finally a sensible fellow. Wood matters only if the guitar is acoustic. Pickups and amps dominate more in electrics. As soon as the strings are plucked the sound will be picked up by the pickups and transferred to the amp before reverberating throughout the body and neck. And when you use considerable amount of effects, the impact of the wood factor declines even more considerably.

While you are correct that the more effects involved, the less the body wood matters, the part in bold is simply false. Anyone that owns several guitars can attest to this.

Now if you take something like an EMG, then it is going to sound pretty much the same no matter what you put it in. However, you take a PAF style pup and try it in an Alder, Maple, and then Mahogany and see if it sounds the same.