Andy Powers
“A guitar neck tends to act like one leg of a tuning fork. I’ve noticed that lots of players – and some builders – act like the neck is simply a stationary part of the guitar, as if it were there only to hold the strings and never vibrate. That simply isn’t true. The neck vibrates in all manner of ways, including a torsional motion – a twisting vibration. The neck’s motion affects the way the string responds a great deal, whether on an acoustic or electric guitar. Most necks are a composite construction of different pieces and as such take on the flexing characteristics not only of their individual wood parts, but also the tension each piece has as it is assembled, the proportions of each piece relative to each other, the glues that hold the parts together, the stiffness the fret tangs add to the fingerboard, and so on.
“There are so many factors that affect the vibrating characteristics, it’s hard to say exactly what a certain species of wood sounds like as a fretboard. East Indian rosewood is a common fretboard wood and attached to a mahogany neck on a Les Paul, it sounds warm and lends a little bell-like articulation to the attack. If the rosewood ’board was nearly the same thickness and attached to a maple Fender neck in the manner of the ‘slab-board’ necks of the 1960 era, the ’board will add depth and richness to the crisp, vibrant response the maple would have otherwise produced. Once the ’board was made thinner and glued onto an arched surface of the maple neck, the response changes again.
“So while I don’t want to sound like a politician squirming out from under an honest question, the best way to describe the way a fingerboard sounds is in the context of one particular guitar. A Telecaster is a great example: you can simply swap very similar necks onto the exact same body and get a fair representation. A plain, single-piece maple neck of average medium girth will tend to have a clear, precise, vibrant response. ‘Twangy’ is the word I like to use. An East Indian rosewood fingerboard of slab board-style thickness will lend harmonic richness that usually comes across as warmth. A thinner veneer-style fingerboard will tend to live in between the two as the rosewood is proportionally less. Ebony is similar in effect, although it tends to make a more sturdy and solid sort of attack.
“There’s also the tactile aspect. The maple ’board is typically finished over and has a clean, crisp feel that tends to blur into a clean, crisp playing style until we wear through the finish, at which point it’ll get real warm and woody feeling. The rosewood, nearly without exception, will be left unfinished and lend its organic and warm touch right from the get go.
“This is one aspect of a guitar that has no absolutes. There simply are so many factors at play, each time I try to answer, it sounds like ‘yes, but…’ One thought I’d throw in for consideration is while I’ve tapped, flexed and listened a great deal, I’ve never once played a fretboard only! I’ve played the whole neck. So all I can really draw from as a player and listener is what the whole neck composition sounds like. Even in times where I’ve changed a fretboard on a single neck, we always play the whole guitar.”