Rosewood/Maple Finger Boards - Tone difference?

[Brad Maestas]

Although I respectfully disagree with your opinion on the fingerboard making the most difference, you hit the nail on the head there.

He said that it makes some difference, not the most difference.

 

[jzucker]

Not likely being that they usually spend just as much if not more time picking a body wood than a top...explicitly for tone reasons.

I still think most folks picking out custom basses go for looks all the way around.

 

[lpdeluxe]

After all, you can SEE what the woods look like together, but unless you are someone with a lot of experience (perhaps Mr Sadowsky) you can't HEAR the combinations until they are built.

A lot of it comes down to trying to outwit Leo Fender.

 

[jobo4]

OK. Just got back from my Gospel gig (our Pastor can go on) and I see there has been some interest in my last post. Sorry to ruffle some feathers, but I still can't tell a difference. I use a Lakland DJ with a maple board and get great warm sounds from it. I can also get barky, growly tones as well.

My belief is that 95% of the tone of a bass comes from the player. No matter what fretboard I use, I will sound like me.

But seriously, how about my historical perspective from earlier in the thread? Any comments? Or do I just blow because I contradicted Mr. Sadowsky?

And feel free to say I'm an idiot for any other reason.

 

[jzucker]

OK. Just got back from my Gospel gig (our Pastor can go on) and I see there has been some interest in my last post. Sorry to ruffle some feathers, but I still can't tell a difference. I use a Lakland DJ with a maple board and get great warm sounds from it. I can also get barky, growly tones as well.

My belief is that 95% of the tone of a bass comes from the player. No matter what fretboard I use, I will sound like me.

But seriously, how about my historical perspective from earlier in the thread? Any comments? Or do I just blow because I contradicted Mr. Sadowsky?

And feel free to say I'm an idiot for any other reason.

I think you're confusing things. Tone and feel and touch *DO* come from the player but the fundamental tones come from the instrument and all it's combinations of wood.

All I can say is that if you don't hear the difference between say a maple neck strat and a rosewood strat, you're not trying very hard enough. The differences are pronounced and are real.

 

[jobo4]

Here is how it was explained to me by John Files at Bass Emporium (with my own little spin)...

Until 1958, the Fender P had a one piece maple neck with the truss rod inserted through the back. The resulting cavity was filled with rosewood, thus the "skunk stripe." In 1959, Fender changed the neck making process by inserting the truss rod into the front of the neck, designing it in such a way as to be able to apply a "fret board" to complete it. To show off their new technology, they made the fret board out of rosewood and the skunk stripe dissappeared.

There would be little doubt that the resulting necks sounded different, because they were constructed in very different ways. Perhaps it was at that point, long ago that the idea that fret surfaces sounded different.

Today, however, most necks are constructed in the same way, with just a different board attached. Looks are different for sure; feel may be different; tone? A tiny bit, maybe.

Here's the post from earlier. Please don't fault John in any way, he's a nice guy. Try to focus your rage and demeaning comments to me.

Many thanks.

 

[Brad Maestas]

I definitely hear a difference. With maple I notice the "start and release" of each note more. Specifically, I can hear when my left hand touches the string to the fret before I strike it and then again when I let go and cut off the note. That doesn't seem to be as apparent with rosewood or ebony boards. That sort of 'click', to me anyways, is a dead giveaway for the maple FB. Of the brighter rosewood FB basses I've heard, their 'click' sound is centered lower than that of maple. I find that I play a little more carefully when I'm on a maple FB because of that click. It can sometimes be annoying when soloed through headphones but it's often a big component of what makes the bass sit in the mix in a special way, too.

 

[Fretless5verfan]

I use a Lakland DJ with a maple board and get great warm sounds from it. I can also get barky, growly tones as well.

My belief is that 95% of the tone of a bass comes from the player. No matter what fretboard I use, I will sound like me.


And feel free to say I'm an idiot for any other reason.

Nothing you say here is wrong, i agree for the most part, but you're confusing the conversation. Nobody said you can't get a certain sound out of a certain wood, just that one wood has a natural predisposition to a certain sound.

And from the historical thing, seems like a wild guess to me. Who's to say that the construction didn't sound different solely for the fact of the rosewood not being included in the neck anymore?

 

[Gard]

Backing up Roger (heya Mr. Sadowsky! ),from a slightly different perspective (I don't build 'em, but I test every single one that leaves the Roscoe shop, and worked at Bass Central for 5 years prior to this job, and got to try out literally THOUSANDS of instruments of all descriptions): yes, there is indeed an effect on tone from fingerboard choices. Heck EVERY SINGLE ELEMENT effects the tone!

Maple: Brighter, quicker attack on the note
Rosewood: Mellower, more "rounded" attack on the note
Ebony: Somewhat "between", hard, but oily wood, makes for a "quick, rounded" attack, which Roger describes very well as punchy

Is it a HUGE difference? No. But, yes, I can hear it, when the "playing field" is as level as possible (i.e. same body woods & electronics, same model of bass), and no I'm not "fooling" myself with the visual aspect, there genuinely is a difference, albeit not an outrageous one.

I tell folks that if they want a certain look over a certain minor tonal effect, get the wood they want. However, if you really want to "fine tune" your sound, and try to get as close to the desired tone NATURALLY, you need to choose every element carefully. No wood will be so overwhelming that you can't EQ yourself to where you want to go (ass/u/me-ing a general high level of quality for the instrument in question! ), but if you want to reach a certain "tonal target" with a minimum of EQ, you can do it with wood choices - body, top (if applicable, it's not necessary, but it affects tone), neck woods & construction, and yes fingerboard choices.

A bit OT, someone mentioned the proclivity of some folks to be overly focused on the top woods, and not enough on the body wood. Good point! The top, depending on thickness, can have a variable affect on tone, but the body wood will define it, 99 times out of 100 (I'm leaving one wood out, because in our shop it has proven itself over and over to deserve being singled out - boxelder burl. This stuff sounds like BOXELDER BURL, no matter WHAT body wood is used! ).

 

[Moo]

Ebony is certainly very bright, and allows for a very low action..

Action is decided by wood species!

And to think I always thought it was how you were aligned with the earths rotation

 

[Gard]

Action is decided by wood species!

And to think I always thought it was how you were aligned with the earths rotation

Yeah, that claim is kinda dubious!

Honestly, of the "big three" fingerboard woods (and yes, there are so many variants of "rosewood", I'm working from Bolivian Rosewood), we find ebony to be the LEAST stable, overall! It is particularly prone to "shrinkage".

 

[Moo]

can any one tell the difference if a guitar player was using a nylon,graphite,copper,brass,etc. pic all the same gauge

I think I could isolate that easier than fingerboard species. Well maybe not between copper and brass but nylon and brass. I still wouldn't put any money on it.

Again, I wouldn't say these things have no difference, just that human ears can't isolate those differences from all the other variables. However the human ego often thinks we can hear what we can see.

PBS just had a show on the differences between the sexes. One of the things they did was play a different sound (made up word fragments) in the left and right side of some headphones. Men would hear just a single sound and when asked to make that sound they would repeat just one sound missing the other completely, women on the other hand usually hear both clearly. This was attributed to the mapping of these functions to our brains but it shows just how limited our ability to isolate things are and how ridiculous it is to claim we can identify a wood species thinly glued to another piece of wood serving as an anchor for a metal string which is vibrating in a magnetic field whose resulting fluctuations are picked up by a coil of wire whose current is then run through a few pre-amps completely detaching the original signal through transistors yet still the distinct timbre of acer saccharum rings through clearly.

 

[Moo]

To my own experience, i have also experienced this as most of my maple necks resonate more and buzz a little more easily than my ebony or wenge type fingerboard.

So ebony and wenge are tone killers?

This maybe due to the fac that ebony more fundamental tone to it whereas maple causes the neck to resonate more.

Those are two different things.

Luthiers, any clues?

No disrespect to the builders but being a luthier does not give anyone special hearing abilities. It's so easy to demonstrate the fact that our beliefs in what something will sound like will have a major influence on what we decide it sounds like that no amount of saying you hear something while knowing what the wood is before hearing it, has any scientific value. It does however have great marketing value which is actually a strike against a builders opinion for testing purposes. The fact they will so often contradict each other also shows a flaw in this assumption.

The only way to tell if we can really hear the difference is to be able to detect the difference without looking at the answer first. Looking at the bass first and then listening is simply asking ourselves if we're as smart as we think we are. Answer yes or no. We usually pick yes

 

[Moo]

Absolute nonsense. How can the neck "probably make a difference" and the fingerboard doesn't????? I am in the position of basically building the same bass over and over and I can absolutely, positively tell you that maple is much brighter than rosewood and ebony has the most punch. Most people never get that opportunity. You can't compare apples to oranges on this one. I have nothing to gain by advocating one fingerboard over the other--it just is a fact. Show me a quote from any reputable bass builder who says otherwise.

Roger

Hi Roger, you're probably in a better position to answer this than anyone. Have you ever tried to hear these differences in a somewhat proper scientific setting. Would you be interested in doing something like this? I don't mean intense lab work but an afternoon of recording a dozen or more instruments in your shop coming as close to a double blind test as reasonably possible. Please PM me if you'd be up for this.

 

[Moo]

It seems Roger put the skids to this debate. So from now on when I listen to the Roots bassist Hub, I'll make sure to note the zingy, bright tone he gets from his maple boarded jazz and Geddy Lee's deep, rich tone from his rosewood boarded Ric.

IIRC Ric uses bubinga, not a true rosewood. Which backs up your sarcasm nicely

But my love of the sharpened word aside you do bring up a nice point about how this is like trying to follow a drop of water as it moves through a swimming pool.

 

[jzucker]

Again, I wouldn't say these things have no difference, just that human ears can't isolate those differences from all the other variables. However the human ego often thinks we can hear what we can see.

This ain't like monster cable. Have you considered that maybe it's you who can't hear the difference? That doesn't mean there's no difference. There are definite brightness and attack characteristics of a maple fingerboard vs. rosewood. How is *YOU* not hearing them and drawing a conclusion from that not ego?

 

[Moo]

Thanks Roger. That's what I've been saying all along but somehow an entire school of (un)thought has come along suggesting that the woods used don't make a difference.

I think that's polarizing the argument a bit and trying to make it personal. It's not that they don't make any difference at all but that we can isolate all these differences and actually tell them apart by listening. At least it is for me. Brazilian and Indian rosewood are different. Can any one tell me the continent of origin by listening? I doubt it. Do people claim they can and it makes an important and distinct difference? You bet.

Keep in mind that there are at least a dozen species of woods from 4 continents that are sold as rosewood on guitars and they all somehow sound distinctly different from maple and similar to each other? Mexican Cocobolo and farmed Asian rosewoods still have the same tone? To many experts they do.

 

[Moo]

Not likely being that they usually spend just as much if not more time picking a body wood than a top...explicitly for tone reasons.

What is the process of selecting wood for tone and what metric is used to judge it? I so often hear about all this tone selecting of wood but I've never seen the process. Is it subjective or can it be measured and repeated so one could come back weeks later and get the same specific results?

 

[Moo]

After all, you can SEE what the woods look like together, but unless you are someone with a lot of experience (perhaps Mr Sadowsky) you can't HEAR the combinations until they are built.

A lot of it comes down to trying to outwit Leo Fender.

Leo by the way wasn't a musician and his goal was to build guitars cheap. The reason we have maple boards is because they are cheaper. For quite a while they were the sign of a lame, poor sounding instrument. Not unlike how '70's Fenders used to suck so bad people bought old pre CBS ones instead. Now the '70's are the golden period of tone and it's the same instruments! I believe we hear what we want to.

 

[rob_the_bassist]

maybe a very experienced builder or player could distingiush the difference between rosewood and maple fingerboards..but what about the average joe in the crowd at a gig? it seems like the fingerboard on a bass wouldn't make it sound all that different that an untrained ear could recognize an aggressive tone solely based on the fingerboard...idk if that made sense but i'm trying here