Does fingerboard grain pattern affect tone?

[waygorked]

I have an opportunity to bag a quartersawn maple replacement neck for one of my Fenderoid projects at a really great price. It has an IRW fingerboard with a grain pattern that is nice and straight for the first octave, then starts to curve toward the high strings from there. Does this grain pattern have the potential to negatively affect the tone in any significant way?

 

[ctmullins]

I think you're waaaaaay overthinking this.

 

[pfox14]

I think the grain pattern on a fingerboard is more about how it looks than anything else.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I've never heard any influence on tone from grain patterns.

Nor have I read or heard of any luthiers asserting that it matters.

 

[waygorked]

That's all I wanted to hear. Cheers!

 

[gator payne]

Any pice of wood that is in the energy flow of the strings influance affects tone. in real simple terms wood with straighter grain and lesser grain runout transmits a higher pecentage of the energy induced into it. So the technical answer is yes grain structure has an effect. How much is subjective to the individual component, species of wood and a whole host of other criteria. For the most part, inperticularly on an electric I would have doubts your ears could pick up the varience.

 

[dougk]

No.

Not enough to even remotely worry about. On the list of the 1000 things to worry about that make my guitar sound its best, this is item -3.

 

[emoney]

While it probably only affects "tone" at an "un-noticeable" level....sustain, on the other
hand is "whole nutha level". Pishaw...about the difference between a real '59 and a
Saga guitar kit.


(I'm totally pulling your leg, of course...)

 

[purevilpleasure]

Only when you look at it.

Turn your amp up.

 

[gator payne]

Only when you look at it.

Turn your amp up.

Here where I live there is an old man that runs an amp shop called Potts music and repair. This old man is a legend in Texas music. Stars from Buddy Holly, Mac Davis, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison and many other legends in Texas country and rock have use this old man's talent to build or rebuild amps for decades. He is also one of my mentors in my youth interms of my introduction to guitar music. I bring him up because if you brought in an amp to be worked on and he found the gain turned higher than four and volume turn up higher than five. he would look at you and say "If you have to turn the amp volume up higher than five to get people to hear you play, then you are probably not worth listening to anyway" I have heard him say that Waylon Jennings personally.

God has bless us with Old Man Potts. may he be with us a while longer

 

[155]

yes it does ,heavily....