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Fretboard: ebony vs. maple

Which wood has a brighter sound?

  • Total voters
    144
  • Poll closed .
#21
BOOG said:
Which wood has a brighter sound?
I don’t have any experience with ebony and wondered if it’s a denser wood and if it has a sharper/brighter sound.
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More importantly, you should be thinking of what fretboard wood is more stable. Go with satin-poly maple...ebony is so sensitive to weather/temp changes, at least from my experience. Both can give you frets sticking out of the edges of the fretboard, during dry Winter weather, but after those would get filed down by a luthier, maple would be fine after that. I can't say the same about ebony. I've had the best luck with rosewood, pau ferro, and wenge (woods with plenty of natural oils), as I have had no trouble with these...no sharp fret ends, cracked/split boards (ebony can do this), or the wood drying out.
 
#24
George Himmel said:
This. I actually think the extra brightness you hear/feel in the response from maple (in the upper middle/low treble region) has something to do with the finish on maple fingerboards. The way it anchors the frets or its specific flexibility give it a characteristic brightness. Maples are actually the least hard/dense commonly used fingerboard woods, but are unique in that they're finished. MTD Andrew Gouche basses get a similar snap, and they use purpleheart for the board--but it's finished to preserve the color. Ebony is quite dense/hard, and can give you a nice, concentrated top end, but so can very hard rosewoods like cocobolo. I've thought for some time now that the finish on maple was a significant factor in its unique, spanky attack.
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I think the finish is a factor, but in addition, unlike rosewood, maple isn't oiled. I've long assumed the oil in rosewood boards dampens some of the "snap" you'd otherwise get from such a hard fretboard wood.

I have owned a bass with an ebony board. It had a slick feel like maple and seemed to add some zing, but the bass had a semi-hollow mahogany body, single coil pickups, and a trapeze tailpiece, so it wasn't directly comparable to my basses with other fretboard woods.
 
#25
First of all, there's a difference between the idea that wood contributes to the tone of an instrument and the idea that the tone produced by specific woods will be predictable. Sit down and play ten basses with identical specs save for the wood and you're going to hear some differences (unless you have ears made of lead). So, yes, the wood matters. The thing is, you're also going to hear differences in basses that match in spec 100% because wood is organic and even two pieces from the same tree can affect tone differently. Having said that, I do believe that different woods can have sonic "tendencies", but that hardly matters if the piece you get doesn't exhibit those tendencies. In the end it comes down to the individual bass. Try before you buy whenever possible and try to listen with your ears instead of your eyes.
 
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#31
The consensus generally is maple with this debate.

I have heard some dispute this thought however while others claim there is a difference no matter how marginal or small it may be. Personally I have always been mostly a ebony neck guy with my basses. I had a few maples and honestly I could not tell a difference myself but that is me...I am sometimes hard of hearing....aka selective hears depending on the occasion and situation ;)
 
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#32
bass12 said:
First of all, there's a difference between the idea that wood contributes to the tone of an instrument and the idea that the tone produced by specific woods will be predictable. Sit down and play ten basses with identical specs save for the wood and you're going to hear some differences (unless you have ears made of lead). So, yes, the wood matters. The thing is, you're also going to hear differences in basses that match in spec 100% because wood is organic and even two pieces from the same tree can affect tone differently. Having said that, I do believe that different woods can have sonic "tendencies", but that hardly matters if the piece you get doesn't exhibit those tendencies. In the end it comes down to the individual bass. Try before you buy whenever possible and try to listen with your ears instead of your eyes.
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Agreed.
Good reminder for all of us that suffer from GAS
 
#33
bass12 said:
First of all, there's a difference between the idea that wood contributes to the tone of an instrument and the idea that the tone produced by specific woods will be predictable. Sit down and play ten basses with identical specs save for the wood and you're going to hear some differences (unless you have ears made of lead). So, yes, the wood matters. The thing is, you're also going to hear differences in basses that match in spec 100% because wood is organic and even two pieces from the same tree can affect tone differently. Having said that, I do believe that different woods can have sonic "tendencies", but that hardly matters if the piece you get doesn't exhibit those tendencies. In the end it comes down to the individual bass. Try before you buy whenever possible and try to listen with your ears instead of your eyes.
Click to expand...
Great post, agree completely.
 
#36
George Himmel said:
This. I actually think the extra brightness you hear/feel in the response from maple (in the upper middle/low treble region) has something to do with the finish on maple fingerboards. The way it anchors the frets or its specific flexibility give it a characteristic brightness. Maples are actually the least hard/dense commonly used fingerboard woods, but are unique in that they're finished. MTD Andrew Gouche basses get a similar snap, and they use purpleheart for the board--but it's finished to preserve the color. Ebony is quite dense/hard, and can give you a nice, concentrated top end, but so can very hard rosewoods like cocobolo. I've thought for some time now that the finish on maple was a significant factor in its unique, spanky attack.
Click to expand...
Agreed. My oiled rosewood 'board on my Yammy (and alder body) warms up the pair of DiMarzio J-PUPs quite nicely. Hearing those maple P-basses in my life is like a song of the siren to me- I keep getting lured to the rocks! LOL

When I first saw a maple neck (a factory replacement/second neck I put on my cheap first bass), I thought, "Why the heck would they PAINT the fingerboard???" Luckily, I didn't try to remove it!

I still have a lot to learn, even though I've learned a few things since then!
 
#37
What does a fretboard weigh compared to the rest of the neck? On most basses it's a thin piece of ebony, maple, rosewood etc that the strings (excluding fretless) never actually touch. Buy what you like the looks of and adjust the tone at your basses and amps tone controls.
 
#39
They’re both on the harder side. If it’s a fretted bass, you’re basically talking about energy loss as the fret thats embedded within the wood tries to bleed those vibrations out through the wood. Any hard wood should react roughly the same. Put a fret in play-doh and it’ll might be a different story. Between ebony and Maple you’ll be hard pressed to hear the difference.
 
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#40
BOOG said:
Which wood has a brighter sound?
I don’t have any experience with ebony and wondered if it’s a denser wood and if it has a sharper/brighter sound.
Click to expand...

From my experience fretboard wood affects the sound just as the shaft wood does as well. Ebony to my ears sounds brighter than maple, while maple does not have the midrange "scoop" that ebony seems to have. Notice I'm not speaking in absolutes, strictly my experience building and repairing lots of basses. The notion that maple is brighter than ebony may come from the upper midrange hump that maple seems to have, it's more midrange forward. Ebony fretboard on a maple neck can be VERY bright at the much higher frequencys that perhaps some bass amps (without tweeters) don't reproduce. So it's not apples to apples comparison unless you compare to different candidates through a full range speaker system. I prefer maple when aiming for a more vintage tonal goal it helps maintain clarity in a dense mix. Ebony to me has a brightness than you can also attain with wenge but the frequency response is different in the lows.
 
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