Sandberg - Oak fingerboards....

[Musicman20]

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/sandberg-guitars-innovates-new-steamed-oak-fingerboard.1290814/

Interesting....

[Bass_Guardian]

Looks nice

[40hz]

That's quite clever. Well done Sandberg!

[Sibob]

Meh, just looks like washed-out/dry rosewood......give me Pau Ferro as an alternative any day....or increasingly I'm loving roasted maple (visually anyway).
Fair play to Sandberg for looking at sustainable alternatives though.

Si

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

Steamed Oak?

for some reason this came to mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUIGvpDolw

[Chris2112]

We'll see plenty of this sort of thing, I'm sure. Builders are going to have to start being clever with their woods now that the Indian rosewood is on lockdown. I expect pau ferro will become very popular as it's not that far from the rosewoods we know and love. Other woods like jatoba, locust and chechen will come to the fore as they're already used in building on a much smaller scale.

One thing that does make me chuckle is the amount of dodgy looking ebony out there at the moment. I recall reading an interview with Phillip Kubicki where he talked about the difficulty he had in getting clean Gabon ebony blanks for his Ex Factor basses. This was like, 30 years ago. Now, IIRC Taylor own most of the world's Gabon ebony stock and they sell at a high price, leading to companies like Kiesel putting marketing spin to work on things like 'tiger stripe ebony' etc. Basically, all the off-colour and impure blanks that wouldn't have made the grade a few years ago on the open market!

[LukeFRC]

There's a video here about why Taylor decided to switch the market to stripy ebony - worth a watch - I think I can support them on the move

I think it's this one but wife is asleep so can't make noise https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=anCGvfsBoFY