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3-Tone Sunburst P-bass, Maple or Rosewood finger board?


jackers
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Hey all,

I know this is subjective and all, but I am currently looking for a secondhand P-bass, and have seen two nice 3TS ones, one with a maple fingerboard and the other with rosewood. Now, they both look gorgeous, but part of me thinks that maple on 3TS looks a bit un-natural compared to rosewood for some reason :S lol.

I was just wondering what you lot think?

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Maple is a harder wood than rosewood? Really?

I know it's Wikipedia, but... [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test[/url] - Rosewood 1780, Hard Maple 1450, Silver Maple 700, Red Maple 950

Makes you wonder about all that "maple is a brighter sounding board" hoohah, too... ;)

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[quote name='cameltoe' timestamp='1339578536' post='1690722']Rosewood dampens the strings better, as it's a softer wood.[/quote]
Leaving aside the point that the string almost never contacts the wood of the touchboard, but the fret wire, can't say I understand this notion of damping. Length of and rate at which the string moves in the magnetic field generated by the pickup which determines the output. Touchboard wood is making no appreciable difference to output or sustain. Don't you think that the reason there's any difference between a neck that's all maple and a neck made with maple and capped with rosewood is construction? Most necks with a maple touchboard are not capped. All necks with a rosewood touchboard are capped.

As for colour combination preferences - two-tone sunburst and maple looks great and three-tone sunburst and rosewood looks great.

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[quote name='Old Horse Murphy' timestamp='1339579311' post='1690753']
Sorry, it has to be Sunburst, rosewood and tortoiseshell. I'm pretty sure there was a law passed to this effect.

Anything else is just unnatural and slightly perverse :)
[/quote]

Couldn`t put it any better.

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[quote name='noelk27' timestamp='1339584974' post='1690871']
Leaving aside the point that the string almost never contacts the wood of the touchboard, but the fret wire, can't say I understand this notion of damping. Length of and rate at which the string moves in the magnetic field generated by the pickup which determines the output. Touchboard wood is making no appreciable difference to output or sustain. Don't you think that the reason there's any difference between a neck that's all maple and a neck made with maple and capped with rosewood is construction? Most necks with a maple touchboard are not capped. All necks with a rosewood touchboard are capped.

As for colour combination preferences - two-tone sunburst and maple looks great and three-tone sunburst and rosewood looks great.
[/quote]

So you don't think maple fretboards sound brighter?

I think if a string is vibrating heavily less than half an inch away from a piece of wood, which ultimately it is connected to, then some of these vibrations are going to either rebound off the board, or be absorbed by it.

How much of either will depend on the type of material. If it's wood, then there are bound to be variances between different woods, even different pieces of the same type of wood.

That's why custom guitar and bass makers spend a lot of time finding the right tone woods with which to build an instrument.

And maple just looks better.

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