ebony or rosewood FB on Azola?

CJY · #1 04-30-2002, 10:24 PM

Hi all,
I've decided to get an Azola Bugbass II and I need advice on the fingerboard material.Is the stock rosewood fingerboard adequate?I'm aware that some people prefer ebony because it wears longer and has better transmission of sound,but I'm not too sure.Is it advisable to get the $250 ebony FB upgrade or is the rosewood good enough?I'm thinking of playing jazz,latin,blues and other types of music on it.Thanks in advance.

**Francois Blais** · #2 05-01-2002, 07:30 AM

The stock FB is nice. (I had an original Bug for a while)
I wouldn't spend $250 on the FB upgrade.
Make sure it's correctly dressed though. Mine had bumps at several places. Had to bring the bass to a luthier to dress it correctly.

HTH.

CJY · #3 05-01-2002, 07:35 AM

Thanks,Francois.
But if you do not mind telling me,why wouldn't you want the ebony upgrade?

**Francois Blais** · #4 05-01-2002, 09:12 AM

The difference doesn't worth $250, IMHO.
The stock FB is really good.
(ebony looks better but the tone difference would be very slight I think)
If you have the money, go for it, but if you're tight on budget, you won't miss much.

Marcus Johnson · #5 05-01-2002, 02:41 PM

I'm with Francois...sort of. I used a borrowed Bug on a session with the rosewood board and it was fine. I then bought a used floating top five string Bug with an ebony board, and it is pretty spectacular. I think it makes the difference between my playing the bass out of necessity and truly enjoying it. I would love to have this board on a Realbass; don't know if all of them are this good though. If you have the extra bucks, buy the ebony, but the rosewood is just fine otherwise. These are nice basses.

Steve Azola · #6 05-01-2002, 06:32 PM

Our advice would be that on a standard solid-body instrument you probably won't notice a *huge* sonic difference between the two types of fingerboards. And it would be many years before wear would become an issue, with either wood type, requiring a routine fingerboard planing. If you have the budget for one of the Spruce top uprights, then Ebony is already included as part of the "top-of-the-line" package. Good Ebony is becoming so difficult to find, that we really do like to save it for the Spruce top or hollow-body basses. As a manufacturer, (here's a switch), we're *not* going to try to convince you to spend more money on the optional upgraded fingerboard ... just to get you to spend more money on a bass.

Also, we would like to assure you that although we've shipped more than 600 basses out into the world, only once, (to our knowledge), has a customer felt that his fingerboard needed to be re-dressed. Unfortunately, that one person was our friend Francois, several years ago. Way back then we had some communication obstacles between us, otherwise I think we may have been better able to resolve the issue in a more satisfactory and timely manner. At this point in the evolution of our instruments, we're quite confident that our fingerboard planing will stand up to most discerning critics.

One other quick side-note ...
We've made many enhancements to the initial BugBass design concept in the past six years. We do hope that people will take that into account when they are critiquing a used/older model BugBass instead of a current model. (Or when reading reviews in the forums and on Harmony Central, etc.).

If there are any other specific questions we can help answer, please feel free to get in touch with us directly.

Sincerely,
Jill (and Steve) Azola
www.azola.com
Tel 760.789.8581

Bass Boy · #7 05-01-2002, 08:44 PM

Last year I was in San Diego briefly and visited the Azola's shop. Jill showed me around six or seven of their basses. There wasn't that much difference between the rosewood and ebony. There was a difference between the regular Bug bass and the floating tops. If you can go for the foating top. I was amazed at the quality of sound. The floating tops I tried were better sounding than most plywoods acoustics and some carved basses I have played. All of the fingerboards I played on were perfectly planed.

Marcus Johnson · #8 05-02-2002, 03:15 PM

Good point, B-Boy; the floating top is a major step up. I've been using mine by choice quite a bit lately; I initially bought it for touring, but it's really sneaking into my regular arsenal. I've been trying different pickup settings and the sound is truly astounding. It bows beautifully too. The icing on the cake, when you buy an Azola, is the fact that Jill and Steve take customer support very seriously and are always ready to help out with info if you need it. Finally, I get requests from players with discerning ears and tastes to bring the Bug; that pretty much says it all for me.

CJY · #9 05-03-2002, 03:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Steve Azola
If there are any other specific questions we can help answer, please feel free to get in touch with us directly.

Thanks for all your reply guys.Actually I have emailed you twice regarding direct sales of bugbasses to where I live(Singapore) but never received any replies.I was quite discouraged by that,so I didn't email you again.But I'm still interested in the bugbass.