Mike's Oud Forums

Yet another thread on fingerboard materials

freya - 1-16-2013 at 05:36 PM

Greetings,

I hesitate to launch another thread into the mix and will try to resist the impulse to express any opinions. The bit I would like to add is that Martin guitar company is now making many of its guitars with "Richlite" fingerboards. The good news is that the material seems to be quite "green", inexpensive, seems to work for the players, and is well documented. The bad news (for oud builders) is that it seems that the minimum available thickness is 1/4in and I doubt that anyone will want to run a phenolic resin/waste paper mix through their re-sawing setup.

However, the material is well documented. See http://www.richlite.com/assets/resources//resource-files/richlite-p... and note the spec for abrasion resistance which (having looked a bit at the "Taber Abraser") seems like it might be a possible predictor for string abrasion into the wood. I couldn't find Taber test numbers for other "hard" hardwoods but haven't dug into it very deeply yet.

And even though I don't think artisanal luthiers contribute much in the way air pollution and forest over-harvesting, the information at http://www.richlite.com/sustainability/ is a model of sorts for organizations that do have such an impact.

Best regards

fernandraynaud - 1-16-2013 at 09:08 PM

Well, we do need some (credible) testimony or photos, to convince John Downing that fingerboard wear exists on ouds, that it can be a nuisance, and that solutions are important.

As far as impregnated or composite stuff goes, the technology is booming. Most nuts have settled on a hard thing called "Tusq" or "GraphTech".

Gibson is now offering its own fingerboard "material" under the name Granadillo on the $2200 Les Paul Studio
http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Les-Paul/Gibson-US...

and Richlite, on the $5800 Les Paul Custom
http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Les-Paul/Gibson-Cu...

They still give you rosewood (for now) on the $3500 Les Paul Traditional
http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Les-Paul/Gibson-US...

(BTW) (forgive me)
Agile Guitars, from South Korea, still offer ebony on their $300-$500 AL-3000 line
http://www.rondomusic.com/3010serootbeerflame.html
http://www.rondomusic.com/product5465.html

including that (gorgeous) $400 fretless model
http://www.rondomusic.com/al3110hsbffretless.html

They use rosewood on their budget $225 Al-2000
http://www.rondomusic.com/al2000tobacco.html

Ironically all the Agiles are said to be very well finished, no worse than the Gibsons. Santa Claus is bringing an ebony fingerboard Agile tomorrow. I can't wait to see ;-)
 (/BTW)

Edward Powell - 1-17-2013 at 08:27 AM

My guess is that Richlite is pretty much the same thing as "Trespa" which is what I mostly use for fingerboards for nylon and steel --- wood is not hard enough for steel strings.

Trespa does come in 4mm width, but I have mine 13mm or 10mm.... and yes I did run it thru my "re-saw" set up... with a metal cutting blade that works fine, but a huge horrible job on my dinky little 350W band saw (killed one drive belt in the process, and dulled the blade... but got two FBs cut in a nice wedge shape in order to have the thick end near the nut)

I am committed to various usages for trespa in my building - it absolutely give you the strength in very small pieces when you really need it, and it look just like ebony... what I don't like about it is that it is so hard and dense that it is difficult to process... What I HATE about it is the dust is very chemical and toxic and gives me headaches and will probably give me cancer eventually if I don't find a more clean and efficient way to use it.

I am still thinking about further experimentation with brass fingerboards.

Jody Stecher - 1-17-2013 at 09:00 AM

Interesting guitar with great musical potential. But I'm puzzled by the compensated saddle/bridge. Surely a straight line makes more sense on a fretless interment. There are no fret-caused pitch anomalies for a saddle to compensate for. What was Agile thinking? Were they thinking at all?
Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud  

Agile Guitars, from South Korea, still offer ebony on their $300-$500 AL-3000 line.....

including that (gorgeous) $400 fretless model
http://www.rondomusic.com/al3110hsbffretless.html


Brian Prunka - 1-17-2013 at 09:50 AM

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud  

Ironically all the Agiles are said to be very well finished, no worse than the Gibsons.


I have heard good things about Agile as well, but you can't compare the polyurethane finish they use with the nitro lacquer that Gibson uses. If you want a shiny finish, poly is a much better choice, of course, and on a solid body guitar it doesn't affect the sound much, if at all. On acoustic and semi-acoustic instruments, it's another story.
Agile definitely seems to be the best contender for economical fretless guitar. The one you posted certainly got my attention.

Is this fingerboard material the same thing that M. Fadel used? His ouds have some kind of synthetic fingerboard, it's actually really nice.

jdowning - 1-17-2013 at 11:08 AM

First, correcting fernandraynaud's statement. I do not doubt that fingerboard string indentation damage can occur on ouds (or guitars). I have already posted two examples from my own instrument collection in support of this. The occurence of indentation damage mainly depends on how hard a wood is - in my opinion. A stained balsa wood fingerboard will obviously not last very long - even with a varnish coating - but how about one made from a dense tropical hardwood like Ebony or Rosewood or even a softer wood hardened by pressure treatment/chemical impregnation? Can fingerboards made from these hard materials last the lifetime of an oud without any significant string indentation damage requiring repair and without any need for 'protective' (and maintenance intensive) coatings of varnish or whatever? If so then clearly the latter 'solution' is redundant.

Harry, why do you believe that a Taber abrasive test is relevant in being able to predict string 'wear' observed on fingerboards? The Taber test - i.e. applying a grinding wheel to the material under test and measuring the amount of material removed - surely does not represent the conditions applicable when oud strings are pressed against a fingerboard. If you check your copy of Fink-Jensen's "Hardness Testing of Organic Coatings" page 276 there is the statement that " ... the general opinion is that abrasion methods are very imprecise and inaccurate. In any event, very careful standardisation of test conditions is necessary, whilst the interpretations of results is difficult and should be supported by experimental verification of a supposed agreement between testing and practice".
From tests I have carried out to date, I believe that the mechanics of fingerboard string 'wear' has little if anything to do with abrasive action but is primarily due to pressure indentation of the string into the fingerboard material due to repeated finger pressure over time. This will be demonstrated later as part of my current hardness tester development topic. This being the case then hardness indentation testing of fingerboard material should be a good indicator of the durability of a fingerboard over time.

I assume that 'Richlite' is just another form of phenolic sheet - in this case layers of paper or wood fibres saturated with phenol formaldehyde resins cured under heat and pressure? - all developed from the invention of 'Bakelite' at the beginning of the 20th C? I would question how 'green' the stuff might be, however.

Edward, brass can be pretty hard stuff, dependant upon the degree of cold working it has received - certainly much harder than Ebony. I have some 'half hard' brass in my workshop so will subject that to my hardness tester for comparative results with wood and report back for your information. I have already tested some pure soft copper (material used for the wire in wound oud strings) and this is relatively harder than the Ebony that I have on test. Brass is harder than pure copper.

jdowning - 1-17-2013 at 11:56 AM

The hardness value for brass is 1.46 compared to the Ebony under test of 3.1 - the larger the number the softer the material for my sytem of testing. So the hardness of brass according to this test method - not surpringly perhaps - is considerably greater than that of Ebony, although it is not possible at present to quantify the relative difference given in equivalent Janka hardness numbers.

edited 19 January 2013

freya - 1-17-2013 at 01:32 PM

John,

I did not mean to suggest that abrasion would be a better predictor than hardness, only for Richlite no meaningful hardness figure was provided so abrasion resistance was all there was to go on. As you noted, other literature suggests the difficulties of measuring "abrasion" both in terms of the equipment required and the interpretation of results

So, your efforts in the direction of Janka testing are very helpful. I already see that some of the woods that I assumed would be more resistant to string wear are not that promising on the Janka side. And, based on info from some of the local instrument wood suppliers, Janka numbers are commonly supplied with their wood specs - not so with abrasion data.

One additional reference site that contains a lot of hardness data and names of primary references is http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/MM011.ASP?pageno=214

So, thanks again for you efforts - I'll sit back for a while and enjoy your results.

jdowning - 1-19-2013 at 05:43 AM

For natural woods hardness is approximately proportional to the density (weight per unit volume - or compared with the desity of water, specific gravity). So the 'heavier' a wood is, relatively speaking, the harder it is. Indeed it is possible to calculate approximate Janka wood hardness values from the relationship H=A X G(to the power of n) where A for 12% MC dry domestic hardwood is 3400, n is 2.09 (U.S. Forestry Products Laboratory) and G is the specific gravity. Of course specific gravity (and hence Janka hardness) for the same species of wood can vary significantly - wood being wood.

When it comes to resin impregnated wood or wood composites this relationship may not apply, the resin itself adding considerably to the overall value of specific gravity without, perhaps, increasing measured hardness proportionally?

A good reference on the properties of different wood species can be found here, The Wood Database at:

http://www.wood-database.com

fernandraynaud - 1-20-2013 at 06:18 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Jody Stecher  
Interesting guitar with great musical potential. But I'm puzzled by the compensated saddle/bridge. Surely a straight line makes more sense on a fretless interment. There are no fret-caused pitch anomalies for a saddle to compensate for. What was Agile thinking? Were they thinking at all?


Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud  

Agile Guitars, from South Korea, still offer ebony on their $300-$500 AL-3000 line.....

including that (gorgeous) $400 fretless model
http://www.rondomusic.com/al3110hsbffretless.html




I think they just supply a standard bridge with teflonish saddles (they're good, the Black TusQ XL bridges too). It's simple enough to set the saddles in a straight line, or however you like. Same thing with their Strat, it's just "standard", you can set the saddles as you wish. But then again, when adjusting intonation with the saddles on a fretless bass with an electronic tuner, it doesn't seem to come out in a straight line.

The more bizarre inclusion of a tremolo bridge on a fretless instrument is due to the same thing: they don't make many of them, and they use all the same parts as on a fretted guitar, except for the fingerboard. Even the neck has side markers in the same place as on a fretted instrument. I seem to remember seeing a fretless 12 string on the Rondo site once.

http://www.rondomusic.com/st625eb3tsfretless.html

I just got one of the fretted Agiles, and I'm more than impressed with the workmanship (and timbre and playability), at any price. I looked at the $3500-$4500 Gibson Les Pauls and it's a long story, but I like the 3000 series Agiles, and at 1/10 the price. I've been able to set the action to well under 1 mm above the fret crowns on the treble side with no buzzing, without having to touch up the frets or adjust the truss rod, just lowering the bridge. It even came correctly intonated. They are apparently all very carefully made, there's a cult following. Rondo is the exclusive importer from Korea. The fingerboards appear to be untreated (?) ebony.

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Jody Stecher - 1-20-2013 at 05:08 PM

Thanks, Fernandraynaud, that explains it. They use what they have. Including side markers, since they were already put in.