That's very interesting, Dr. Jim, I'd never seen that post before. Particularly interesting since I was talking recently to Carl Pedigo, longtime head luthier at Lakland, about this very subject. In his view, body wood plays a bigger role in tone than fretboard wood. (Keep in mind, of course, that this is my recollection from a couple months ago, whereas we have a post typed from Roger Sadowsky here.
)Carl's reasoning was along these lines: Fretboard wood is divided into small chunks by frets, and is a thin layer on top of the neck itself--thus, there's not much material to affect the strings' vibrations compared to the bulk represented by the body wood. And to his ears, there's little difference,
Ultimately, I think Roger's last statement (which is good advice, I agree!) indicates that in the grand scheme of things, fretboard wood doesn't matter all that much. So the opinions of these esteemed gentlemen probably aren't really far apart.
), I hear the fingerboard making a bigger tonal difference than the body wood.
