I received the guitar on Thursday and have had a few cumulative hours to play it. I'm also aware that the guitar's sound is likely to evolve somewhat in the coming weeks, so I don't want to get too detailed in talking about the sound since I don't think the instrument has fully settled in.
First of all, this is my first extensive experience with ebony (though I did play a delightful Circa 00-12 with Macassar ebony at HGF) and to the extent that I'm already familiar with the top (European spruce), I think I can parse out the effects of the ebony back.
Two words describe my initial reaction: big and loud. REALLY big. In fact, my 4 year old was sitting next to me when I plucked the first notes and she asked me to turn it down. The bass notes are big and rumbly and sound like the bass/cello section of an orchestra. In fact, with a bass this big, you would almost worry about the mids and trebles getting through without the whole thing sounding muddy and garbled. Ray is able to build a mids/treble voicing that can compete with the big bass all of his guitars produce, which is probably one of the most important aspects of his builds. The bass is huge even on his OMs and yet it doesn't mask the instrument's voice.
The attack on this guitar is sharp and aggressive, in addition to being loud with lots of headroom. In my opinion, the ebony doesn't have the overtone content of rosewood. Rather than spend its energy budget on overtones, the ebony seems to front-load the sound with volume and attack. It sustains, but its not Goodall-style grand piano sustain. I actually view that as a positive attribute because the Goodall Standard I owned for a few years was just that: a grand piano with the sustain pedal depressed. While that sound initially strikes a player as beautiful (and it is), it can really lead to muddling, and that was the main reason I ended up parting with the Goodall.
So to me the ebony imparts more fundamental, volume, and attack than your typical rosewood, with less sustain and overtone content. For a big bodied guitar like this, I think those characteristics preserve the note separation and clarity that otherwise might be lost by the "grand piano" effect. And yet the sound is very much orchestral, the way Billy Boy described. The bass notes are big, round, and breathy, very cello-like, which was precisely the impression that caught my attention when I first played a Kraut Modified Dreadnought. The mids and trebles are clear, authoritative, and beautiful. It really is very much like having an orchestra inside a guitar.
The cumulative effect when I'm playing a fast-ish fingerstyle song is that you hear a very powerful but melodic voice, and the tendency toward note separation and fundamental gives you a very pure sound. It's not a warm guitar, at least not yet ("warm" in my mind meaning a softer attack and longer decay); its focus is really power and clarity, and I think that matches really well with the big dread body.
I am hoping that as the guitar matures it will soften the attack just a hair and put some of that energy into just a touch more sustain. Ray tells me to give it a couple of weeks to settle in. In the meantime, I'll be playing it every chance I get.
Of course it goes without saying that it's a beautiful instrument, built to the very highest standards. I don't have any immediate comment on the effect of the fan fret. Whatever the effect, it's subtle. I'm currently playing it with lights on all but the high E and B, where I have mediums. This sounds and feels well balanced to me. The setup is right where most of my acoustics have been and is very comfortable and playable. The neck profile is slightly shallower than Ray's standard, though not by much, which means the neck is on the large side of average.
One last comment before I give the guitar a couple more weeks to settle in. The top Ray chose has to be the single nicest piece of spruce I have ever seen. It is flawless, and the crazy silking makes it really stand out. It looks gorgeous against the contrast of the black ebony.
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