why ebony fingerboard?

srpompon

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I think durability, but as you point out, there are many alternatives available.
 
Durability as it is a dense hard wood, also beauty, also I am guessing because since it is darker it hides finger grunge well.
 
I dont know I have seen them made of Maple, Rosewood, Walnut. Pretty much just needs to be dense and hard. Even dyed black to look like ebony. I like the contrast and the ability to hide inlay flubs.
 
Why not ebony?? Its a great wood for fingerboards...durable and basic black looks great against any body wood and binding combo. Its also traditional for premium guitars so that tradition got extended to ukes. Hiding gaps in inlay is super easy on black so that's another plus. Other woods are fine too and perform just as well... they're just not ebony lol
 
Hi,

Most of my premium ukes have ebony fingerboard, and is no a option... is ebony or ebony, why?

I see some very nice fingerboards woods in https://www.cookwoods.com/shop/category/fingerboards-ukuleles/

Is about sound? durability?

thanks!

Ivan

It is about the hardest (wears less), it has a fine pore structure, good natural oils, and is more uniform in color (not including Macassar).


I've seen the same fingerboard hardwoods used for pocket knife side covers/handles (ebony, rosewood, cocobolo, mesquite,....).

Makes me wonder why there aren't acrylic fingerboards, just as there are acrylic pocket knife side covers.
There are some pretty wild and beautiful handle designs in acrylic.

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Blackbird and a number of other guitar makers have used Richlite, which is made of paper and phenolic resin. I had a Blackbird tenor that had a Richlite fretboard and it seemed to be just fine in terms of function and durability. It certainly beats most any wood for stability. Even so, I wouldn't use it on one of my instruments (well, never say never....) for the same reason that I don't use plastic bindings: I just prefer to use wood for its aesthetic qualities.
 
I have three ukes and the fretboards are a) ebony b) Indian Rosewood and c) applewood. They all look and sound great. Ebony is traditional and I like it, but the others work fine. I think it depends on the luthier and what kind of look the client and builder want.
 
For plain Nylon strings Ebony might be seen as overkill. It's also not the most stable wood in respect to changes in Humidity, so in those terms it's not as suitable as many people seem to think.
For Ukes and Nylon strung Guitars there are plenty of alternatives, less so for steel strings. Bog oak is a pretty good alternative if you want Black. I have a Guitar with an Oak fretboard and not one single player has noticed that it isn't Ebony. It does happen to be a very deep Black example though.
 
For plain Nylon strings Ebony might be seen as overkill. It's also not the most stable wood in respect to changes in Humidity, so in those terms it's not as suitable as many people seem to think.
Indeed. Seriously, steel string guitars have two common features which are pretty much exclusively for the purpose of fighting the instability of ebony fingerboards... that being the double-acting truss rod to counter backbow from its longitudinal expansion, and popsicle brace to minimize the chance of cracks beside the fingerboard extension.

It makes sense for violins, where you really need the wear resistance to keep the playing surface flat. Also, I have a feeling that the use of curly maple necks actually improves stability, since it has some of the side grain aligned with the longitudinal axis, which in theory (I need to run an actual text sometime) should make it expand more longitudinally, matching the ebony's naturally high longitudinal expansion rate and keeping the neck straight.

But for fretted instruments, I don't like it. Unless maybe if I'm using a curly maple neck.

I mostly use rosewoods. I've also used Texas ebony (similar to mesquite, not a true ebony) and granadillo (Platymiscium sp.), and like them both. Ziricote certainly looks good, but seems a little soft, especially for steel strings. But probably ok for ukulele, especially since you don't get much string-to-board contact with the closely spaced frets anyway. Probably in more danger from long fingernails :)
 
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For me I really like the feel of it when playing and ebony also looks best to me. Both my customs, MB and Mya-Moe would not look nearly as good to me with rosewood fingerboards.
 
Over the last 5 days at a uke jamboree I've played on 40 or more different ukes..The good ones were the one's that I didn't want to put down after 3 or 4 minutes of playing,
There were about a half dozen of those that I really liked :D they sounded great good tone and resonance and were easy to play...I havn't a clue what the fretboards were made of, and some didn't even have fretboards....I guess I was too busy concentrating on what really counted....I did remember that one of the best ukes had a red wood fretboard, so that one was not ebony.:rolleyes:
 
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Take a look at any guitar that's been played regularly for a few years with ANY fingerboard other than ebony. Look down at the "cowboy" frets...1-5. You will almost undoubtably find grooves and divots being dug into the fingerboards. This is not from strings so steel vs. nylon doesn't matter. It is from fingernails. Ebony does not do this. In my experience, it is far more durable. I love it.
 
What on earth gives you that idea? Nails, cut them. That's what most players of stringed instruments do.
 
Yeah, classical guitar players, that's how you can tell -- fingernails on the fretting hand are usually trimmed short, those on the plucking hand are longer. One of the luthiers I know offers a choice of Rosewood, African Blackwood, or Ebony on his uke fingerboards, and for me, the choice would be based on how each goes with the rest of the instrument, since I would expect any of 'em to be more durable than I am at my age ...
 
I expect luthiers here know this, but as a mostly-ignorant soul, I didn't: The Janka Hardness Scale for wood: http://tonewooddatasource.weebly.com/technical-data.html

According to this, the top ten woods for pure hardness, (which obviously isn't the only factor a builder would use) are:

Wood Variety**** *** Sorted by Hardness

Ipe (Lapacho) * * * * * * * * ** 3680
African Blackwood**** *** ** 3500
Macassar Ebony * * * * * * * * 3220
Brazilian Rosewood * * * * *3000
Bloodwood*** *** *** *** *** *** 2900
Osage-Orange * * * * * * * * * *2500
Jatoba*** ************* * ** * * * * 2350 **
Screwbean Mesquite * * * * 2335
Persimmon * * * * * * * * * * * *2300
Santos Mahogany*** *** ** * * 2200

I find this kind of stuff fascinating ...
 
tl;dr

Fingerboard material has no effect on sound. When you fret a string, the string is contacting the fret, a bit of metal, not the fingerboard. I'll concede that the opposite end, the saddle material, might have a small effect on sound, mainly in terms of its ability to transfer the vibration of the string to the soundboard, and the varying amount of vibration that different materials "absorb" having an effect on sustain. The only way that fingerboard material could possibly have even the tiniest effect on overall sound would be down to the density and thickness of the fingerboard. Even then, I doubt that anyone could tell the difference between, say, rosewood or ebony.

Just my opinion of course. Don't let the fact that I'm unarguably correct cloud your judgement ;)
 
Something else just occurred to me...

Take a guitar with block fret markers. If fingerboard material had an effect on sound, every note travelling up the neck would sound different to the preceding note. Wood>Inlay>Wood>Inlay>Wood etc etc
 
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