Braz boards , what's the deal?

ThorpyFX

I have a couple, my PRS 513 has a solid Braz rosewood neck (amazing but probably because of the solid neck) the Gibson 65 SG Junior has a Braz board from the "golden era". both are great guitars but i also have another couple of guitars that are great and they have standard rosewood on the fretboard. personally im not sure if it makes a jot of difference. I had a Vigier that had a composite springboard that was awesome so if its lively its lively.

Skipped

slacker said:

I've got a student model ES125 with  Brazilian board. It does look nice but not much more than my other guitars and I don't go wow I can feel that Brazilian.

I've just read the last sentence again. I've left it in, have fun.

You can feel it every time you play it. You can see the sheen and if your guitar had a slightly softer wood it would be a slightly different guitar.
For many of us....in fact I will say most of us......tiny, tiny differences make a huge difference.
If I reach in my pocket and start playing with a Clayton Ultem pick (instead of Acetal or Tortex) it feels like the world has ended. That is how horrible it is to me. And it's just a pick of identical size and gauge....different material.

One of the effects of the hardness - and the sheen - is that, on a guitar with inlays, trapezoid or otherwise,the positions with an inlay feel the same as the positions without an inlay.
So....I think that the fingerboards are one important element of guitars that Gibson made in the 50s.

That is different from me thinking that there is some mystique to any piece of braz. If I had a choice of 2 Historics from the same year - and one had a certificate with some sort of "confirmation" of the fingerboard material,  I would be interested in the other much cheaper guitar and I think the braz thing in this case is a target for ridicule.

slacker

Skipped said:

slacker said:

I've got a student model ES125 with  Brazilian board. It does look nice but not much more than my other guitars and I don't go wow I can feel that Brazilian.

I've just read the last sentence again. I've left it in, have fun.

You can feel it every time you play it. You can see the sheen and if your guitar had a slightly softer wood it would be a slightly different guitar.
For many of us....in fact I will say most of us......tiny, tiny differences make a huge difference.
If I reach in my pocket and start playing with a Clayton Ultem pick (instead of Acetal or Tortex) it feels like the world has ended. That is how horrible it is to me. And it's just a pick of identical size and gauge....different material.

One of the effects of the hardness - and the sheen - is that, on a guitar with inlays, trapezoid or otherwise,the positions with an inlay feel the same as the positions without an inlay.
So....I think that the fingerboards are one important element of guitars that Gibson made in the 50s.

That is different from me thinking that there is some mystique to any piece of braz. If I had a choice of 2 Historics from the same year - and one had a certificate with some sort of "confirmation" of the fingerboard material,  I would be interested in the other much cheaper guitar and I think the braz thing in this case is a target for ridicule.

I think we are sort of in agreement.

I currently play in situations where I use my 1952 ES125 for one thing and my 2004 LP Classic for another. Because I play them for a specific use I am obsessing less than I play. However I rarely use the Rickenbackers and find little faults with them when I do. However when I played in a covers band that did a lot of Beatles stuff the Ric were great.

The little things do matter but there is a point where you have to get up and play. I did some acoustic stuff on holiday last year, I was literally handed a guitar and asked to play something. I cannot remember the make of that guitar let alone the fretboard wood.

CloudNine

I think @fretfinder had a BRW board put onto a Historic, if I recall correctly. That has to be the ultimate test of whether any tonal difference, as comparing different guitars is meaningless, although even with the same guitar, you can't A/B them directly... He might let us know thoughts.

ArchtopDave

I bought a piece of old Brazilian Rosewood for the Fretboard of the Lester that I made for myself. The thing, that particularly impressed me about it, was how easily it was to sand to a beautifully smooth finish. Pore size was very small, so it has the kind of surface that you get with Ebony.I've also got a 1950's Gibson, so I strongly suspect it's got a Brazilian Rosewood Fretboard as well.

fretfinder

CloudNine said:

I think @fretfinder had a BRW board put onto a Historic, if I recall correctly. That has to be the ultimate test of whether any tonal difference, as comparing different guitars is meaningless, although even with the same guitar, you can't A/B them directly... He might let us know thoughts.

I did indeed, a labour of love on my 2005 R9. Unfortunately I couldn't tell you if there's any difference in tone as the guitar was away for over a year and I didn't have any recordings I'd made of it beforehand that I could replicate afterwards. The main difference to me is the colour, nice and dark and regular compared with the previous wildly streaky board, and the 'correct' inlays that it has now compared with the previous 'smashed ice' inlays Gibson were using back then, before they changed to the correct type on Historics from 2012 I think.

Was it worth doing financially? Not really, it was a daft extravagance but I could afford it and I now love the guitar, whereas I was never quite happy with it before because of the streaky fingerboard. I've also changed all the parts and plastics to aged boutique stuff, fitted Throbak pickups which I got Spence of Shed to part wax pot to cut the squeal, fitted a shugz loom with genuine 50s. bumblebees, a Pigtail tailpiece, a Faber bridge, and Fake58 shrunken machine heads. So it was a labour of love and it's a guitar that will never be sold, and will be passed down one day to my eldest son whose a nifty plank-spanker. I doubt he'll ever sell it on either although he'll be welcome to do what he likes with it as far as I'm concerned.

http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j359/Fretfinder/7d074a2f1b5a9aead9684880ad5fa35e.jpg

DartmoorHedgehog

When did Brazilian wood stop being "the norm"?  My oldest guitar is mid-80s (and not expensive) so I assume I've only ever had Indian rosewood.

guitars4you

DartmoorHedgehog said:

When did Brazilian wood stop being "the norm"?  My oldest guitar is mid-80s (and not expensive) so I assume I've only ever had Indian rosewood.

as far as Fender are concerned around late 62 on a Strat when slab boards finished

Gibson/Epiphone mid 60's - can't recall a specific date - 

Martin - not sure but believe around late 60's

these are the 3 main players - otherwise spasmodic supply - PRS used them till around 1991 - cost and supply an issue as you increased production

DartmoorHedgehog

guitars4you said:

DartmoorHedgehog said:

When did Brazilian wood stop being "the norm"?  My oldest guitar is mid-80s (and not expensive) so I assume I've only ever had Indian rosewood.

as far as Fender are concerned around late 62 on a Strat when slab boards finished

Gibson/Epiphone mid 60's - can't recall a specific date - 

Martin - not sure but believe around late 60's

these are the 3 main players - otherwise spasmodic supply - PRS used them till around 1991 - cost and supply an issue as you increased production

In that case it's certain I've never had one.  TBH I don't think I care much about fretboard material in general - I've got two acoustics and an electric with rosewood of some kind, one with composite (modern Hagstrom) and a Gibson MM Special with what I think is their baked maple board, and I can't say I prefer one over the others feel-wise (and they're too different in other ways to know whether it affects the sound).

Gassage

A change of pick will make more tonal difference than this- even I know that...!

Maybe a further reason is the association with BRW and slab boards. I would also argue that slabs sound more punchy and sustainy by a long way over round lams- it's the construction not the species.

richardhomer

Gassage said:

A change of pick will make more tonal difference than this- even I know that...!

Maybe a further reason is the association with BRW and slab boards. I would also argue that slabs sound more punchy and sustainy by a long way over round lams- it's the construction not the species.

Yet when I owned a veneer board pre-CBS Strat it sounded thicker than a number of slab-boards I compared it to.

I think each guitar has to be judged on its merits; I found plenty of 'truisms' which aren't when put to the test.

Gassage

richardhomer said:

Gassage said:

A change of pick will make more tonal difference than this- even I know that...!

Maybe a further reason is the association with BRW and slab boards. I would also argue that slabs sound more punchy and sustainy by a long way over round lams- it's the construction not the species.

Yet when I owned a veneer board pre-CBS Strat it sounded thicker than a number of slab-boards I compared it to.

I think each guitar has to be judged on its merits; I found plenty of 'truisms' which aren't when put to the test.

Funny you should say that; I had to have some work done on my blue strat bridge pick up today. Martin @thelittleguitarshop sorted it out; it's now 5.4k v 5.7k on the neck. The power is amazing (low output theory proven again!). One thing I reckon is it's cos it has a very chunky profile after the 9th fret, common to that era. Dunno?

richardhomer

Gassage said:
Funny you should say that; I had to have some work done on my blue strat bridge pick up today. Martin @thelittleguitarshop sorted it out; it's now 5.4k v 5.7k on the neck. The power is amazing (low output theory proven again!). One thing I reckon is it's cos it has a very chunky profile after the 9th fret, common to that era. Dunno?

The '63 had a pretty slim neck - but with a lot of taper - it was much fatter at the octave than at the nut. I believe the pick-ups were darker sounding in the mid-60s that earlier ones - but it was a great sounding instrument. The bridge pick-up sounded huge - yet still bright/clear.

It has a three-piece alder body - which was 'normal' and it weighed about 8lbs - not light but not heavy. Played unplugged you could hear a lot of depth - the low E sounded really deep - most modern Strats don't have that (though my Ash bodied CS does - yet Ash is supposed to be brighter - as are one piece maple necks).

My '65 three-tone sunburst was about the same weight - but was much more 'middly' - less bright/clear and less depth. The output was pretty much indentical. I'd love to understand why - but I genuinely think some pieces of wood have a 'magic' about them and some don't.

Iamnobody

armitaan said:

I get that people think Braz boards are the best, but does the uptick in price used and new from the big brands make sense? It was about a £100 uptick on price on a custom made strat build I was offered  so struggling to understand the massive markup on lot of guitars out there ?

£100ish sounds about right. I'm having a custom guitar made at the moment. Brazilian was an £150 upcharge - the builder didn't push it and basically said the difference in tone between Braz and the cocobolo he uses as standard was negligible.

ICBM

richardhomer said:

Gassage said:

Maybe a further reason is the association with BRW and slab boards. I would also argue that slabs sound more punchy and sustainy by a long way over round lams- it's the construction not the species.

Yet when I owned a veneer board pre-CBS Strat it sounded thicker than a number of slab-boards I compared it to.

I think you're both hearing that the same, just describing it differently - to me, a round-lam board sounds thicker and softer than a slab which is brighter and punchier. All other things being equal and trying large numbers of them over a long period of time obviously, so it's still just an impression rather than totally scientific, but I think it's probably accurate.

The biggest difference is still ebony vs any of the other fingerboard woods or constructions though.

Sassafras

For all you cork sniffers.

Monstronaut

Both my guitars have brazilian boards. It looks nice, beyond that who knows. 

WezV

Monstronaut said:

Both my guitars have brazilian boards. It looks nice, beyond that who knows. 

Decent braz just looks boringly consistent.  That's why everyone used it in the 50's as a cheap alternative to ebony.

if I could get 50's braz I would use nothing else.

the trees that were harvested back then simply don't exist now.  Big trees with nice straight trunks and a lot of perfectly boring consistent looking wood.