Sure they differ among the same species but I don't think anyone would be confused between rosewood and pau ferro if you were posting images of completed fretboards. The differences are pretty obvious when you're looking at a big piece.
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Rosewood vs Pau Ferro
- Thread starter Turnaround
- Start date
Sure they differ among the same species but I don't think anyone would be confused between rosewood and pau ferro if you were posting images of completed fretboards. The differences are pretty obvious when you're looking at a big piece.
The thing that really sucks is rosewood and many others on the CITES list are on it because of the furniture Industry and not luthiers buying up all the lumber. Does anyone really need a whole bedroom set made if rosewood, apparently they do and we have to suffer. In the future I think there will be lots of necks and bodies built with other materials ( AKA, not wood ). Hopefully those instruments will sound good and not cost a fortune to make, in the meantime I’m hanging on to mine still made with wood
Can I toss in ziricote as a great looking.feeling. and sounding fingerboard wood?
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I think people get too caught up in the species thing. The two photos just posted are a bit blurry and the background differs, but the top one looks less pink and has a tighter grain. I would guess it is not Pau Fero. I think both are too light for my preference in fretboard appearance, but I like the first one more
I’m much more concerned if the frets are level and crowned properly.
Meant to include it in the post ... Top is Pau Ferro, bottom is Rosewood. Sorry about the quality - I just grabbed the first comparable photos I could find off the 'net.
Just for reference, here's a fresh roasted pau ferro fingerboard blank. I glued it onto that neck last night. It's a mahogany (guitar) set neck for Mike Lipe. In a few minutes, I'm going to pop it into my machines and radius and slot it. That's what the bare wood color looks like. The roasting takes it much closer to natural rosewood color.
The first photo is of a Fender Precision V beautiful rosewood fingerboard. I never should have sold that bass.
The second photo is of my Fender Player Precision with Pau Ferro.
The third photo is of the Pau Ferro fingerboard on one of my Cirrus 6 strings.
The woods look very similar to me. I love figured and rich colored woods and these fingerboards all please me. I have seen some rosewood and pau ferro fingerboards that did not appeal to me. It is a matter of taste.
My Upton standard upright has an ebony fingerboard with a beautiful (to me) stripe of figure in it. Some guys prefer their ebony to be jet black.
As stated by others, Pau Ferro is harder than rosewood and should be more durable. Fender used it on the Roscoe Beck V basses. I own one and it has a fingerboard that is just okay looking IMO.
Here's that guitar neck with the roasted pau ferro fingerboard on it, radiused and slotted. This is bare wood, lightly sanded. A coat of fingerboard oil/sealer on there will darken it quite a bit. You can see how the roasting process takes away most of the orange stripes and darkens it overall.
In terms of mechanical properties and machining, I like roasted pau ferro better than Indian rosewood, and even most Brazilian rosewood.
In terms of mechanical properties and machining, I like roasted pau ferro better than Indian rosewood, and even most Brazilian rosewood.
Yeah, Pau Ferro has been around for a very long time.
My one-year old Sadowsky also has a Pau Ferro fingerboard and I constantly get complements about how beautiful the grain pattern is. It's one of the things that first attracted me to it.
Average Pau Ferro is much harder than average Indian Rosewood (the most common rosewood in use today). Brazilian Rosewood (getting rare and expensive) is a different story. Brazilian rosewood varies in hardness, but some of the hardest boards get close to the hardness of Pau Ferro. Roasted Pau Ferro is somewhat softer, but still much harder than Indian Rosewood.
I'm in the "fretboard makes a tone difference" camp, and have settled on pau ferro as my #2 choice, with ebony being the first. I find rosewood to typically be a bit too round for my taste, and prefer the snap of a hard wood.
My Player P has pau ferro, and it is spot-on for what I'm looking for. I liked the maple fretboard one I had previously, but prefer the pau ferro.
twss...
My Player P has pau ferro, and it is spot-on for what I'm looking for. I liked the maple fretboard one I had previously, but prefer the pau ferro.
twss...
I like the looks of my Player P pau ferro, but I always like the brown looking rosewood too. Not a big fan of ebony and the sleek dark look it has, I prefer darker rosewood to it, but I always seemed to really like the brown rosewood for some reason. I guess it looks more "woody" to me lol.
Anyways, with a bit of care and a bit of oil, I really dig the pau ferro, and even the reddish tint it tends to have.
Anyways, with a bit of care and a bit of oil, I really dig the pau ferro, and even the reddish tint it tends to have.
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Gotta be rosewood. Just something about it that clicks with me every time I play a bass with that fingerboard.
During my P-times i had rosewood boards only for its little plus in low mids; the Steinberger L2-5 gives me exactly the same, even though it's a Phenol thing.
