Marbled looking Ebony on New Martins??

[sstaylor58]

As others have said, Bob Taylor has been an innovator on this. I encourage you to go to Taylor’s website and search “ebony project”. Great to Martin on board with these conservation efforts.

[AVWIII]

I was really disappointed in the jet black dyed ebony used on a new 18 series Martin I was considering a while back.
I love seeing grain and variations in the woods on a guitar. When it's dyed so "perfectly" it might as well be richlite.

[westview]

Back in the day, I bought a new D 28 (1974).
It had an all black ebony fretboard.
After all these years of playing and fretboard cleaning, more and more of the brown is showing.
Beginning to look a bit natural.

[RLetson]

Just a few days ago I had a chat with a builder friend who confirmed that uniformly-black ebony is very hard to find. The topic came up because we were looking over the stripey- dark-brown ebony fingerboard of a 1920 Martin 0-18. The only non-original wood on that guitar is its replacement bridge--a project that took some time to complete while the repairman looked for a piece of ebony that matched the color and pattern of the split original. I suppose an 0-28 of the same period might have featured black ebony.

Here's an interesting photo from a Swedish dealer's page: what looks like an original 0-18 bridge next to its replacement. The original is what my old bridge looked like. Quite pretty, I think.

https://www.vintage-guitars.se/A4067651_12.jpg

[jacot23]

My new D-18 has some streaking/marbling in the fretboard and I love it.

[nostatic]

here's a bigger hunk of ebony - 2011 build, ebony and satinwood over chambered walnut. I prefer the character, ymmv.



fwiw my 00-18 is pretty streaky, the 0M-21 less so, and the MD even less so.

[JonWint]

Originally Posted by sstaylor58

As others have said, Bob Taylor has been an innovator on this. I encourage you to go to Taylor’s website and search “ebony project”. Great to Martin on board with these conservation efforts.

Martin was into conservation of ebony before Bob Taylor was born. Martin has been using mottled gaboon ebony for over a century. They dyed it to make it look all-black. They did that for efficient use of the resource.

The Taylor innovation is incorporating the use of mottled ebony in guitars as virtue signalling in marketing.

My 1927 00-18 shows brown mottling that was exposed after light sanding during a refret.

[IMG][/IMG]

[cc132]

I think the streaks can look really beautiful and would think that a highly streaked fretboard could be a premium feature.

[Tony Burns]

i like that look - that wouldnt hold me back from buying a guitar -

[Kyle215]

Love this development. It looks great and cuts down on waste, definition of a win/win.

[AfterViewer]

Reminds me of how Indian laurel looks on a new Fender Telecaster instead of rosewood. Both nice woods. Most woods have more visual "woodlook" than that of dark all-black ebony. * I have and play my late father's 80 yr old steel string acoustic that has all the original ebony fingerboard, tuning knobs, bridge, and ivory bridge-pegs that were made years before plastics were used in mass-manufacturing in the U.S. Maybe ebony used for piano keys had something to do with it's popularity for use in guitar building.

[Bob Womack]

Whatever happened to "Big Yellow Taxi"?

They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot

I think the guys in sandals in San Diego got this one right. Instead of putting the trees into a tree museum, they partnered with Madinter and bought all export rights and the only sawmill that processes the only ebony left in the world. They put an end to the 10 to 1 ratio of killing-to-harvesting ebony trees and started reforestation immediately. Meanwhile they set about to create a better life for those involved in the trade in Cameroon as well. I think the virtue came first in this case. Oh, and Taylor has refused to dye their fingerboard blanks all along.

But it does remind me of another guitar I bought in the '70s. The company advertised the fingerboard as ebony. Twenty years later I had it re-fretted and the neck was planed a bit to take care of a bow. My luthier/tech called me and said, "Uh, I was planing and discovered that the neck isn't ebony, it is rosewood dyed black. It is a very nice chunk of Brazilian rosewood, in fact."

Bob

[sstaylor58]

Originally Posted by JonWint

Martin was into conservation of ebony before Bob Taylor was born. Martin has been using mottled gaboon ebony for over a century. They dyed it to make it look all-black. They did that for efficient use of the resource.

The Taylor innovation is incorporating the use of mottled ebony in guitars as virtue signalling in marketing.

My 1927 00-18 shows brown mottling that was exposed after light sanding during a refret.

[IMG][/IMG]

I think you research what Taylor is doing. I’m not saying they were the first, just that they are doing by helping the entire community that harvests the ebony etc is quite a story, and I commend them for it. Not trying to start any arguments geesh.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by JonWint

Martin was into conservation of ebony before Bob Taylor was born. Martin has been using mottled gaboon ebony for over a century. They dyed it to make it look all-black. They did that for efficient use of the resource.

The Taylor innovation is incorporating the use of mottled ebony in guitars as virtue signalling in marketing.

My 1927 00-18 shows brown mottling that was exposed after light sanding during a refret.

[IMG][/IMG]

You've missed the parts of the thread talking about the many builders over the years who did just as Martin did: dye the wood. Not dissing Martin, by the way: they were doing right.

The problem was at the woodcutter end of the process. Woodbuyers would pay higher prices for pure black ebony, so the cutters out in the woods would often leave the trees with mottled wood lying where they were felled and try another.

It is interesting how the view on this subject has changed over time. A dozen years ago the majority consensus on mottled fingerboards was, just, no. Small builders had been doing mottled broads for a while, and some middling sized ones like Larrivee. Larger builders, as you noted, dyed fingerboards. Taylor, to his credit, made the case for mottled fingerboards to not only be acceptable, but for the beauty in them to be seen.

This thread being the proof in the pudding that, by and large, he was pretty successful in that effort.

[doublescale1]

A new dyed ebony fretboard creates the "Black Fingertips" club, then it stops rubbing off. It's wood, it grows that way, take it for what it is in all its organic glory or get yourself some black fingertips.