Quote:
Originally Posted by 310Taylor
Rosewood is a great wood for fretboards. Today, you are lucky if you get rosewood with such alternatives as micarta and whatever else they are using. Ebony is just better than rosewood. Its harder producing better tone, its black (which looks awesome). I'd say the biggest difference though is tone. You know it when you are playing on a quality ebony board.
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I quite disagree with that. Just because something is harder does not mean it produces "better" tone. First the fretboard wood on a acoustic is relatively null in terms of modifying the tone. Secondly what is "better"? What's better to you may be horrible to me.
On bridges there is a tone modifying difference. While it's not enormous it's there. Ebony is denser and therefore tends to dampen the tone a bit more lending to a darker overall flavor, while Rosewood is
usually lighter in weight and does not dampen as much lending to a quicker slightly brighter open tone. I've heard people say Ebony makes for a guitar with more bass, but in reality I believe that it actually just dampens out some high end and gives the impression of more bass because the highs are not as prominent. I, personally, much prefer the rosewood for bridges, but within that I tend to go for the slightly more dense rosewoods. I'm usually going for a weight more than a certain wood. Lately I've been liking Madagascar, Brazilian and African blackwood for bridges, but I've been modifying them so that the weight ends up about the same in the end. Plus the rosewoods normally have a bit more resonance or "Q".
Of course this is all things being equal and they never are!
