Taylor 110 Fingerboard/Bridge ebony vs RW?

[stardot]

Sometimes I find myself wondering "WHY does a guitar sound like THAT?" and the guitar at hand was a Taylor 110 made in July, 2007. I like the guitar well enough, but in pondering this "WHY" question, I came to realize that the Taylor specs from the current models specify ebony for the fretboard, and no spec for the bridge. Normally, I'd expect that to match. From most reviews I found, it does.

But my guitar, has a rosewood bridge, and unless I'm mistaken, a rosewood fingerboard as well.

In doing a little digging I found that some 110's had that combination in 2007-2008, and I'd like to know, what prompted the changes from ebony to rosewood then back. Or is it just of no consequence, soundwise?

[JLed79]

Fingerboard and bridge material are only there for aesthetics. They have absolutely zero impact on tone.

[ecguitar44]

Enormously negligible impact on the tone.

Or at least outside of the realm that it would be dinstinguishable in any meaningful way from the other variables that impact tone dramatically more.

[fazool]

Well, not just aesthetics, but also wear resistance and playability (a little bit).

The most important thing a fingerboard material will determine is wear. Soft woods will wear out very quickly. Look on eBay and such at a lot of pictures of older guitars. They often have divots worn under the strings.

And on some guitars, they would dye the fingerbaord black and the wear marks expose the light wood underneath so you can really see this.

So a hard material like ebony will last a very long time. Rosewood is not quite as hard as ebony, but is a close second.

The other thing to think about is playability: the way your fingers can slide over the fingerboard. The way it feels in your hands. FOr example, I don't like basic maple fingerboards (Strat/Tele/etc.). I don't like coated fingerboards (Danelectro). Its a personal feel thing - which feels better to you.

The woods hardness, surface roughness, oiliness, grain structure, etcetera - all play a role in how it "feels".

Neither will have any impact on sound.

EBony is harder to get than rosewood. Taylor bought a Ebony mill in Cameroon and is now a world class producer of ebony fingerboards.

I suspect there was a time when they were specifying rosewood or maybe having a supply issue.

On a scoring scale of 1-100, from worst to best. (for example, I would put balsa wood at 1 meaning thats the worst a wood could be). I would put ebony at 100 as the best a fingerboard wood could be. I would put rosewood at 99.