White Ebony fretboards

Rabs

Interesting...   check this new Gibson Dave Amato signature...   Apparently the fretboard is made from White Ebony..  Not seen that before.. Looks cool though

Whitecat

Unless this is Gibson taking liberty with wood naming a la Korina in the 1950s, white ebony is simply the sapwood of the tree, whereas the black stuff has to come from the heartwood. 

Taylor gets a lot of "mixed" ebony now, and making a concerted effort to make people want it. Getting a uniformly black fretboard on a Taylor now is less common than a streaky one.

Rabs

Whitecat said:

Unless this is Gibson taking liberty with wood naming a la Korina in the 1950s, white ebony is simply the sapwood of the tree, whereas the black stuff has to come from the heartwood. 

Taylor gets a lot of "mixed" ebony now, and making a concerted effort to make people want it. Getting a uniformly black fretboard on a Taylor now is less common than a streaky one.

Well this is the thing.. Ive seen streaky ebony and the streaky bits look much lighter than what I can see on the guitar above...  What he has on there almost looks more like grenadillo which Gibson have used before and is like a light rosewood...

I have just never seen a fretboard made of totally lighter Ebony like that...   What with the new Rosewood laws id imagine we will be seeing much more of it...

Whitecat

Absolutely - I think it's extremely rare to see ebony that consistently white on guitars for sure, but as you say, going forward we'd better get used to it. Bob Taylor will be pleased, more sales for him... 

WezV

Looks like dull dirty maple

WezV

Grenadillo tends to be more of a brick red for most of it.  but the sap wood is quite like that

JayGee

Whitecat said:

Unless this is Gibson taking liberty with wood naming a la Korina in the 1950s, white ebony is simply the sapwood of the tree, whereas the black stuff has to come from the heartwood. 

Taylor gets a lot of "mixed" ebony now, and making a concerted effort to make people want it. Getting a uniformly black fretboard on a Taylor now is less common than a streaky one.

I like streaky ebony. Bring it on!

Philly_Q

I don't like it.  It looks insipid.  Maybe it would look a bit less wishy-washy if the headstock wasn't black.

usedtobe

The whole guitar looks a bit washed out to me...

octatonic

Looks interesting.
I prefer my ebony with a streaks, or macassar, which is my favourite.
I see a lot of people dyeing streaky ebony so that it looks uniformly black, I'd prefer they left it natural.

Sassafras

It's another name for Richlite.

Bridgehouse

Sassafras said:

It's another name for Richlite.

CITES will be wanting to ban Richlite next...

proggy

I thought it looked quite nice. Needed another pickup mind.