Ebony vs Rosewood Fretboard?

Choose the fretboard wood that you think looks best and choose your pickups wisely. Why? Because in my opinion, while tone is affected by fretboard wood choice to a certain degree, the pickups will have a much greater impact.

I agree, but the only caveat is that you can change pickups a lot more easily than changing your fretboard. :)
 
my $0.02: As stated above the fretboard is part of "the voice" and the pickups are "the microphone". I agree that pickups are easily swapped out if not to taste. My personal experience is that fretboard material is a significant component of "the voice". I would also say that in a semi/hollow body I prefer ebony or similar as I feel it brings back some of the attack and focus that is diminished by the chambering/hollowing of the body. YMMV of course.
 
I agree, but the only caveat is that you can change pickups a lot more easily than changing your fretboard. :)

Maybe I should have said looks and feels right. I seriously doubt there are many who could consistently differentiate the tonal difference between rosewood and ebony fretboards, all other things equal.
 
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Maybe I should have said looks and feels right. I seriously doubt there are many who could consistently differentiate the tonal difference between rosewood and ebony fretboards, all other things equal.

I'm sure that you're right in most cases.

However, we have to remember that when we hear something, the sound has to be interpreted by our brains. It isn't just "there it is." This is why, for example, your brain can filter out background noise at a party and concentrate on what the person you're talking to is saying. This ability to interpret takes place in real time.

We all know about people with perfect pitch, but very few have it. On the other hand, most folks have a sense of relative pitch, but that also varies from person to person.

There are folks who "can't carry a tune," and folks who have a great sense of pitch. There's a reason for this, and it's that ear/brain interpretation - processing thing. I think it works almost like eye/hand coordination. A pro baseball player has a much more developed sense of eye-hand coordination than I do. I'm a pretty poor athlete for that reason.

On the other hand, I've always had a knack for identifying notes and intervals. I hear formant and color differences between various note pitches. A lot of people don't.

So we're all different, and all of our abilities to perceive this stuff, and to even truly understand what to listen for, are going to vary wildly. With the concession that I may in fact be overestimating my ability, I think I might be pretty decent at being able to hear and interpret these differences.

EDIT: It occurred to me as I'm sitting here this morning with a mug of coffee that it doesn't matter at all if anyone can consistently identify whether this guitar and that guitar were built with this kind of wood or that kind of wood. What matters is whether or not they sound different from one another. If a person can say that this one sounds different from that one, it's a little brighter, or a little darker, or a little fuller, or a little thinner - well, that's enough.

Now as to how you achieve that, over time the experience of luthiers and players can offer some guidance, but the results of wooden instrument building can't be 100% consistent.

In an amp thread I posted, I stated that inconsistency is also variety and individuality. That's not a bad thing!
 
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My experience with ebony vs rosewood boards comes from owning and playing two 1980's prs basses...one an ebony board fretless with flat wound strings ..and the other the same model with a fretted rose wood board and round wound strings. having said that ....for bass the ebony definitely gives a smoother faster feel though the combination of round wound and frets on the rose wood board is brighter to me. But let me give you food for thought and in theory why I prefer ebony fretboards. Since the ebony fretboard has a greater hardness (junka rating) than rosewood.....it becomes a greater stabilizer of the neck and you should have little or no dead spots on the neck. This is also achieved by ordering necks with a quartersawn cut neck rather than then standard flatsawn. This is what is most important to me.
 
My best friend had a early 2000’s Heritage h-150 with a beautiful ebony fretboard that was just an absolute effortless joy to play. he traded it for a 2008 Mccarty korina. It’s the ONE guitar he really wishes he had back.
 
I have an HB II Artist with the Hog/ ebony .
As much as I love rosewood ,for fretboards I'd go for ebony . Plays great , the most durable, and works well for that instrument.
Now an All rosewood neck .. that's a different story
 
I had a G&L ASAT Special that I put Fralin P90's in with an Ebony fretboard. To my ears the ebony fretboard put back some of the mids that the semi-hollow body took out. In all it was a very evenly balanced sounding guitar top to bottom. You don't get a big look at the fretboard but that is the ebony one.
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