Selecting the right wood for your guitar’s fingerboard is an often overlooked decision in the world of guitar playing. Where seasoned pros and session musos tend to meticulously piece their axes together, the hobbyist or weekend rockstar may be less picky.
Either way, the right fingerboard can provide you with some valuable benefits that are sure to improve the caliber of your playing.
In this article, I’ll compare Rosewood and Ebony fretboards based on my personal experience playing several guitars with each fretboard over the years. Hopefully, this will help you determine the best-suited option for you.
In short, Ebony is a much harder wood compared to Rosewood and feels slicker to touch. It produces brighter and snappier tones, while Rosewood produces a more balanced overall tone. Rosewood is more adaptable to environmental changes, so it’s better suited for traveling musicians and also beginners due to its softer feel.
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Aesthetics
The most common types of ebony are exceptionally dark, almost jet black. Ebony is also used to build a variety of string instruments, including mandolins, cellos, and villains.
Ebony fingerboards tend to have sharpness in their tint, and pair well with other dark woods.
While Rosewood is also a dark wood like Ebony (albeit being slightly less dark), it comes in a few variants.
As the name suggests, Rosewood also carries reddish and warm tints in its overall color and has a more organic aesthetic than Ebony. This is largely due to the fact that Rosewood is naturally oily, so doesn’t require finishes which can often feel very artificial (very common with Maple fretboards).
Rosewood also tends to have a larger grain than Ebony and is more porous.
Durability
Ebony can withstand long periods of playing before showing any major wear and tear, as it’s the denser wood between the two. However, Ebony’s longevity also depends on the environment.
Sadly, Ebony does not hold well under harsh conditions. The wood is prone to swelling under high levels of humidity, and can also shrink and crack in colder damp conditions.
One minor edge that Ebony has over both Rosewood and Maple is the amount of maintenance that’s required. Due to the nature of its construction and darker appearance, it doesn’t need to be cleaned as frequently.
As the more porous of the two kinds of wood, Rosewood can withstand changes in temperature and humidity a lot better than Ebony.
The wood is naturally oiler than Ebony and this is a key factor behind its flexibility. Touring musicians will appreciate the wood’s adaptive nature as it favors the changes in the environment while traveling.
Playability
Due to its fine grain and firm feel, Ebony fingerboards offer outstanding playability. The wood allows quick and fluid left-hand movements. However, it might be a bit too rigid for some players, which makes it tricky to sustain chords for long periods.
Rosewood has a slightly spongier feel when compared to Ebony. The added softness that Rosewood provides makes it a great choice for beginners that may still need to wear their hands in while learning to play.
Some experienced lead guitarists may claim that Rosewood is too soft to provide proper clarity while playing plucked notes like melodies or arpeggios.
Tone
Ebony’s fine grain allows for it to produce a spritely and bright tone. This makes it a popular choice for guitar-heavy genres like hard rock and metal. It’s also a very popular choice for acoustic guitars due to the bright tone.
Ebony fingerboards also provide a sharper attack and give the guitar tones an added sense of bite or snap compared to other woods. Fresh strings may sound a bit too harsh on some Ebony necks but can be played down quite easily.
Rosewood is well renowned for having a highly balanced overall tone. The wood has a wonderful even frequency response and is neither too shrill nor too boomy.
These traits make Rosewood a strong choice for acoustic guitar builds and for styles where the guitar is not the focal instrument, such as funk or jazz.
Importance of Fingerboard Choice
The fingerboard is the primary source of a player’s expressional articulations and inflictions. As a guitarist, you learn to incorporate certain elements like pitch bending, hammer-ons and pull-offs, and bar chords to generate a variety of sounds and tones.
Different fretboard woods not only produce different timbres but also impact your finger movements. Understanding how each wood affects your playing and overall tone production is an important step for evolving as a musician.
Conclusion
The comparisons listed above should give you a fair idea as to how Rosewood and Ebony square up as a wood choice for your fingerboard.
Both kinds of wood have a set of definitive characteristics that will determine a fair amount of subtle but crucial elements in your guitar playing and tone production.
I highly recommend that you use this article as a simple guide, and test each wood personally on a variety of guitars before deciding on a final option. After all, you can’t go wrong with a guitar that feels the best in your hands, irrespective of your pre-conceived ideas about its building blocks.
good post, sir :). ebony for me is so luxurious too :). i just ordered a player strat w/ ebony fret board……. thanks for california !!!!!! btw, how is mark macatee doing ? i love that band more then ac dc……. his solos are tippy top five in the whole world….. including jerry garcia, john mayer, billy strings and carlos santana….. Mark could keep up w/ any of them 🙂
You guys realize that when you fret a note the strings NEVER touch the wood? It’s all BS. They are just aesthetics.
I can attest to all points except the durability comment on Ebony. I like the feel and clarity of Ebony for tight fast solos and consistently add fretboard conditioner to ensure the wood does not crack or swell. I like the richer tone of rosewood on classic songs for the smoother tone. True answer – it depends!
Very interesting article, Bam Bam. I have often wondered about the very things you explained. I’m probably not proficient enough for the fretboard material to make much of a difference in my sound, but you piqued my curiosity and from now on, I’ll be listening for the things you mentioned. Thanks so much.