What type of Fretboard wood do you prefer?

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Lets say price is no option

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There might be a song in there.

I like the feel of ebony

I used to be picky but I don't care as much anymore. I either like the sum of the woods or I don't, from a tone perspective, a resonance perspective, a feel perspective, visual, whatever.

A killer fingerboard that hasn't been mentioned is pau ferro. Don't let Fender's use of it on MIM products bias you ... it's really good wood, it's pretty, more importantly it's plentiful and not threatened, so it's a great value.

Keep in mind, the American-made SRV signature strat has had a pau ferro board from day one and for ages now. My first guitar to have a pau ferro board was a 1992 Tom Anderson Drop Top. That wasn't a cheap guitar.

It sits tonally, to my ear, somewhere between rosewood and ebony. And if you prep it right (unlike the Ensenada factory), you can get it really slick and glassy under the fingertips.

The vast majority of ebony trees in the wild produces board feet with varying degrees of black and chocolate streaking and striping. Only one in 20 trees harvested can produce jet black ebony. Because that's what the typical consumer wants, manufacturers have been dying random brown streaks in mostly-black ebony boards for ages now.

Nowadays to get pure undyed solid black on your guitar, you're going to be buying a $2K and up guitar, or a replacement neck of that caliber. That's also why when you play an under-$1K Asian "ebony" fingerboard guitar, your fingers will turn black for the first few months. That's the dye.

Harvesters have to cut a tree to reveal if it has pure black ebony, and they used to leave the 19 "bad" ebony trees in the wild to rot. It was only in recent global conservation and stewardship years that builders realized you can "scavenge" that perfectly good ebony with cosmetic challenges for pennies on the dollar compared to the solid black stuff.

Plus you can market yourself as providing top notch product WHILE you're saving the planet by buying downed cast-aside "flawed" ebony.

Giving it a swag name like "pale moon ebony" helps the marketing machine too haha.

Is there any difference tonally, or playability between any of the different shades of ebony?

Next bass will be:


Surf Green body on an American P-bass

Ebony fretboard (the 1 out of 20 jet black variety)

Surf Green headstock

Rubidium custom hardware

I’m gonna geek out for a minute...

I have had two Partscasters built over the past couple of years. Rick Beato’s buddy Dave Onorato did the work - he’s freaking awesome to work with and I highly recommend him!

It started with a Strat with a rosewood neck that I thought needed a fret job, but was actually warped. Dave walked me through different neck configurations and I ended up with:
- Flame maple neck
- Ebony fretboard
- 1 5/8 nut width
- 12 inch radius
- Stainless jumbo frets (6105)

When I was younger I heard some fancy guitar had an ebony fretboard and always had it in the back of my mind it was preferable. I don’t recognize any tonal difference between the ebony and rosewood on my other Strats. However, the jumbo frets, narrow nut width, and flat radius provide a super smooth and glassy action.

It’ll come as no surprise... I got the necks from Warmoth. It took a couple of months to get them built, but has been worth it for the 2 guitars I’ve had done. Dave Onorato puts the guitars on his Facebook page (Dojo Guitars) if you want to see them. One was a “midnight blue” Strat and the other was a black Strat with a black/white humbucker in the bridge position.

In the end, I prefer ebony and rosewood to maple necks. Others might hear a difference in the woods, but it’s an action and feel thing for me. Ultimately in my approach, my fingers provide the tone to the amp and the amp does the rest.

FYI - I play through a Friedman Dirty Shirley combo.

I like maple for electric and rosewood for acoustic, but I'm fairly agnostic. The feel and playability of the neck is far, far, far more important that fretboard material.

Particularly in acoustics, the top material has far more influence on the tone. On electrics, the mass of the body, strings and pickup choice are all far more significant influences on the base tone (plus the amp and effects of course for the final tone).

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There might be a song in there.

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It only costs a little more to go first class.