Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....

[sumgai]

Fender has been brewing a controversy lately, stating that it will transition many of their products (but not all) away from Rosewood to Pao Ferro.

The real reason for us to consider acquiring more knowledge here is that the CEO of Fender, Andy Mooney, has stated clearly and breathlessly that Pao Ferro is an 'accurate tonewood'. (emphasis added)

We keep batting this around here in The NutzHouse, but now a particularly large manufacturer has entered into the game of "Tonewood, Tonewood, who's got the Tonewood".

Your comments, if you please.

(Oh, and I'm not linking anywhere, I don't want to influence anyone by linking to a page that might have an agenda of some kind.  Let the Bingle be with you, Luke.)

sumgai

(the castigation instigator)

[newey]

Was rosewood an "inaccurate tonewood?"

Starting with Leo, Fender has always built guitars from what parts they could find, from the Tele's parts-bin-cobbled intercom switch on down the line. As we've discussed before, tropical forests are disappearing, and are increasingly regulated because of that. I suspect nothing more than the rosewood got scarce, and more costly, and they scored a big lot of Pau Ferro much cheaper. Everything after that is probably spin and marketing-speak.

As to fretboards, different woods have different feel under one's fingers, and I can understand a player wanting a particular wood for the feel of it. But now we're talking tone wood in only the fingerboard, not even the (solid) guitar body? I say, "identical guitars except for the fingerboard wood, same amp, same player, double blind test . . ." and prove to a significant majority of a group of listeners that there's an audible difference. Otherwise, I'm not biting at the "accuracy" of this or that tree.

[JohnH]

I read somewhere the other day that Fender plan to keep the USA strats using rosewood and change the Mexican ones.

[gumbo]

May 25, 2017 3:30:38 GMT -5 JohnH said:

I read somewhere the other day that Fender plan to keep the USA strats using rosewood and change the Mexican ones.

That's to make them lighter so they can throw them over The Great Wall Of Don.

[Deleted]

wasn't there a problem with Gibson and their rosewood some years back? And then followed some stories about roasted maple? Does this fall into the same problem-category?

Anyway, IMO by "accurate tonewood" I think he meant stable, not prone to bending / twisting / etc. Btw a soft wood (hmmm why don't they make necks out of .. basswood and then add some titanium or carbon rods + one double action truss rod and make it stable?) in a traditional setup would also be inaccurate and unstable . So using the word "tonewood" is a small part of the story the fender man told.

[Yogi B]

I'd say you're on the money as to the real reasoning, as I suspect this pretty much covers it:



One definition given for accurate is: "Conforming exactly or almost exactly to fact or to a standard", so I guess that Pau Ferro is accurate in that it conforms to being not Rosewood.


Also since I saw the above video, I've been wondering how the marketing departments of the major players would spin this. Well I guess now I know, just the usual mantra of somehow objectifying the subjective matter of tone.

[blademaster2]

I had also heard that the rosewood restrictions are being extended to all rosewood and not just Brazilian. That sounds like the real reason. The fingerboard does need certain mechanical properties that are beyond just its resonance, so selecting a suitable alternative is tricky. Rosewood has been one of the few woods used for fingerboards consistently for many decades. Given that the fingerboard is half of the sustain, but only half (ignoring acoustic feedback from amplification), it will take some adjustments in the industry to react to this in a widely-accepted manner.

It makes me think again of Brian May's guitar where he used oak for the fingerboard and painted it black. I have not heard of any other guitars that used oak, but it is crisp and hard enough (and has Brian's track record) to be another contender. It would possibly need filler for the very open portions of the grain.

Meanwhile, I will have a look at the hardness and other mechanical properties of this new material myself to see what it is all about.....

[sumgai]

Ordinarily, you'd see cynical1 hisownself submitting a few choice words here, but I recently had a conversation with him wherein he mumbled something about socks that have rotted off his feet, having to hire a swimming instructor for his horses, and a bunch of other grumbling about the rain in Portland, etc.

So I'll take it upon myself to "remind" you all about the Janka hardness test, that which describes the density of wood.  The following link goes to Wikipedia, but if you're interested in other facets regarding the use of wood in various projects, Bingle is your friend.

The Janka Chart, ala Wikipedia

HTH

sumgai

[blademaster2]

Of course hardness (the Janka Hardness rating for wood) is key here and of primary importance.

Additionally, so are other factors such as grain open-ness (not sure what word to use for that), oil content for glue adhesion, grain homogeneity and isotropicity, hygroscopicity and expansion uniformity (very important to maintain level frets), texture for fingertips, tendency to chip and split (different from hardness), and aesthetics. Cocobolo might also be a good candidate functionally, albeit harder to glue due to the oils and I have no idea about its scarcity. I like both ebony and rosewood, slightly more than finished maple, but I look forward to trying the alternatives some day.

Tonewise I can easily imagine subtle differences between woods, but whether or not I or others would hear a noticeable tonal difference between the various hardwoods will be a subject of much debate. I am sure that debate will go on forever as guitarists eventually pine over the long-lost tone of rosewood.

[Deleted]

Jun 1, 2017 13:23:17 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

eventually pine over the long-lost tone of rosewood.

Pine as a tonewood sucks! Alright, I am kidding Anyways what happened to maple? I hear its plenty all over, so why not this? Also, between "indonesian" rosewood and chinese rosewood it is night and day. BTW I don't understand why the name rosewood, when the rose tree is a different species. Anyways, I think that Birch / Beech / or even oak are plenty in Europe.

But the ultimate inevitable future will be synthetic materials.

Cyn1, good luck with the rains and horses man!

[newey]

But the ultimate inevitable future will be synthetic materials.

Not only the inevitable future but the fairly distant past as well. Hagstrom was using what they called a "resinator" fretboard, as I recall, way back in the '60s or at least the 70's. These were made of a wood-and-phenolic-resin composite, and were more "plastic" than "wood". I've played several, years ago, and they were nice, you would never know the fretboards were a composite unless told.