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Post subject: Maple or Rosewood?
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:05 am
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What's the difference between maple and rosewood fingerboards?


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:13 am
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IMO I think Maple sounds brighter then Rosewood.


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:25 am
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Many (if not most) guitar players think they sound different because of visual cues (maple looks "brighter," it's associated with country music, etc), but there's no audible difference. Guitar builders and pickup manufacturers have done blind listening tests and proved that guitar players can't hear the difference when they can't see the wood: It's strictly a matter of appearance.


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:12 am
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Well maple is sort of yellowish and rosewood is sort of brownish.


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:23 am
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aha


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:51 am
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Gravity Jim wrote:
Many (if not most) guitar players think they sound different because of visual cues (maple looks "brighter," it's associated with country music, etc), but there's no audible difference. Guitar builders and pickup manufacturers have done blind listening tests and proved that guitar players can't hear the difference when they can't see the wood: It's strictly a matter of appearance.


I must dia agree yet again.....i have said this in other posts but i will say it again. i feel a differnece in the wood. my maple is more springy and does have a brighter tone, but a maple is a fatter sound.

And i ask is Eric Johnson crazy for thinking that the placement of his pedals (not in his chainn, but on stage) and the direction in which he plugs in his cable makes a differnce?


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 12:04 pm
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flamekaster wrote:
Gravity Jim wrote:
Many (if not most) guitar players think they sound different because of visual cues (maple looks "brighter," it's associated with country music, etc), but there's no audible difference. Guitar builders and pickup manufacturers have done blind listening tests and proved that guitar players can't hear the difference when they can't see the wood: It's strictly a matter of appearance.


I must dia agree yet again.....i have said this in other posts but i will say it again. i feel a differnece in the wood. my maple is more springy and does have a brighter tone, but a maple is a fatter sound.

And i ask is Eric Johnson crazy for thinking that the placement of his pedals (not in his chainn, but on stage) and the direction in which he plugs in his cable makes a differnce?


What Eric Johnson believes about his pedal chain means nothing in this discussion: the two facts have nothing to do with each other.

Yes, you feel a difference between maple and rosewood, and you see a difference, and you've heard a million guys say that they sound different, so you imagine that the MUST sound different.. But I'm sure you've never participated in a blind listening test, because if you had you would know that they don't.

How would a thin piece of wood that never comes in contact with the vibrating string affect it's vibration?

This idea that maple sounds bright and rosewood sounds warm is just one of hundreds of tone myths invented by guitar owners and solidified by the Interweb.


Last edited by Gravity Jim on Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:33 pm
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I think it just looks and feels different but does not affect the sound. personally I prefer the feel of maple.


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:40 pm
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I also guess, it looks and feels different but the sonic difference is more than tiny.

I agree with Gravity Jim, its just a myth in the internet...


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:55 pm
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I know that what I'm about to say makes no scientific sense:

With a maple fingerboard, I feel I'm playing ON the fingerboard, it is hard and does not give with finger pressure; with a rosewood board, I feel the rosewood microscopically gives as I fret it, making it a cushion and more comfortable to play on it.

Sonically, the difference isn't all that much once the hardware and electronics chain take over.


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:46 pm
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Wouldn't the fact that a maple finger board is usually part of the neck, and a rosewood fingerboard glued on make a difference in tone and sustain. It makes a difference wether the body is a single peice, or several. It also makes a difference weter the body is ash, or poplar or chambered or solid. Brass saddles sound better than graphite, I think. And Bone nuts sound better than plastic, why wouldn't the fingerboard marerial make a difference?

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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:02 pm
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FirstMeasure wrote:
Wouldn't the fact that a maple finger board is usually part of the neck, and a rosewood fingerboard glued on make a difference in tone and sustain. It makes a difference wether the body is a single peice, or several. It also makes a difference weter the body is ash, or poplar or chambered or solid. Brass saddles sound better than graphite, I think. And Bone nuts sound better than plastic, why wouldn't the fingerboard marerial make a difference?


Again, I say, unscientifically, I feel that there is more porosity in a RW board than that of a maple and so, the RW breathes with my playing.

I agree with the rest of your comments as well. I do want to note that when it comes to the woods affecting tonality, I agree here too but not to a predominant degree. Rather, I think hardware, how the guitar is constructed and electronics come into play significantly in concert with the base woods. I feel too, that glued woods may or may not absorb some frequencies as equally as they may radiate frequencies.


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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:21 pm
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I prefer rosewood over maple, and ebony over rosewood--the reason? the feel on my fingers. Maple fingerboards are normally finished and rosewood and ebony ones are not. with rosewood and ebony you feel the wood, with maple you fell lacquer or some such finish. I find maple ones slippery, and harder to play. I like the feel of the wood under my fingers. I know people who prefer maple for the same reason--they like the slippery feel. Others don't care.

When I bought my Mustang the store had 2 of them--they looked like the one in the middle and the one on the right of this picture-http://www.guitar-museum.com/guitar.php?ID=318
I liked the sunburst body and didn't like the brown finish, but I wanted the rosewood neck. While I pondered getting a brown Mustang the salesman offered to switch the necks, and I immediately took him up on it. I was delighted to see this picture on the internet showing 2 Mustangs that show what mine came from. I'm wondering if Fender just made those 3 finishes that year--and if they did the fingerboards the same on them all.

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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:27 am
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Well, don't let me spoil anybody's religion: go ahead and believe any evidence-free, no-actual-direct-experience thing you want to.

But I'll leave you with this paraphrased concept from Paul Reed Smith on the subject of fingerboard material: "If you take a piece of wood, and run 22 pieces of metal through it across the grain, just how much of its resonant properties does it even have left?"

Guitar players want to believe they can predict the tone of an instrument based on it's construction, but they can't. When 75% of your tone is amp dependent, do you really think fingerboard wood makes ANY difference?

This is audiophool stuff.

A perfect example of this was the much-derided Silver Rock Potentiometer. This is a volume control for an audiophile stereo system. It costs over $6,800. That's right. Just for the volume control.

They used to offer, as an optional add-on for this insanely overpriced pot, a wooden knob to replace the Bakelite knob it came with. The manufacturer of this thing claimed that the wooden knob was so perfectly turned, so precisely weighted, that it eliminated vibrations that normally creep into the pot, thereby allowing even more pristine straight-wire audio to pass through the unit.

This was a large, wooden knob. It cost $485.

And yet, even though it seems obvious that this knob would have no effect on the sound of the circuit, they had testimonials on their page from people who bought the $485 wooden knob and claimed THEY COULD HEAR THE DIFFERENCE.

This object was the target of so much derision on the Web that I think they stopped offering it.


Last edited by Gravity Jim on Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:58 am
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That makes sense to me Jim. As a personal preference for appearence, it depends on the color of the finish. I have a Honey blonde and I love the maple neck. On my custom shop 3 tone sunburst, I love the rosewood.

I used to believe that there was a tonal difference. I just spent some time at the music store playing two Strats, same model just different neck finishes through the same amp with same settings... if there is a difference, my ear can't hear it, but thats not saying too much lol.


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