The only way to test how much difference the fretboard on a guitar neck makes is to use different necks on the same body. This is only realistically possible with a bolt-on neck. Which is exactly what YouTuber Rhett Shull did.
Ok, there's a caveat here – it involves swapping out different necks, not just the fingerboard. And that means the individual neck's wood and radius itself has some impact on the sound. We all know two necks are rarely the same. Still, this is as close as we can realistically hear the impact and quite frankly, we're surprised.
Sweetwater sent Shull a guitar (the American Vintage II Strat in Fiesta Red) and two Fender necks; a '50s Road Worn lightly relic'd maple and a roasted maple example, in addition to the Strat's stock rosewood slab fingerboard. Sweetwater's techs set the necks up for the guitar with the same vintage tuners and tested installation on the Strat beforehand for the setup.
This prior prep and the choice of Fender Strat makes sense for ease of swapping and we wonder if the old adage of maple necks sounding brighter and snappier will hold true over the rosewood, but if so it will be subtle even in Shull's studio environment through a Port City Grandville amp, played to a click.
In my headphones this sounds snappier to me – it sounds brighter
As Shull points out, Leo Fender's original switch to rosewood slab fingerboards wasn't about tone, it was because he didn't like the way the maple 'boards were showing wear. But put your headphones on (studio headphones if you have some) and listen to the clip above and… trust your ears.
"I think there's something here, man," Shull says after trying the Road Worn maple neck. "In my headphones this sounds snappier to me – it sounds brighter… it's like I'm hearing more of the string and attack. More brightness than I was on the rosewood."
We try listening again blind and he has got a point. An audience won't hear it, but how many times have we heard that when talking about gear? It's whatever you feel is better or the preference that matters. And it's not that the rosewood is dull, but warmer with this particular guitar. And the maple is brighter, with the roasted variety's difference not quite as pronounced.
"I like the rosewood the best," says Shull listening back to the recordings. "That's what I want to hear from a Strat – it's across all three pickups, the three different examples that we played, the maple is consistently brighter and snappier and noticeably so. And that goes for the finished fingerboard and the unfinished fingerboard of the Road Worn. The maple is brighter – it just is."
"I'm genuinely shocked it's this apparent," adds cameraman Chris.
Check out the full video above and if all this talk has promoted you to start looking for a new neck for your Fender, check out Sweetwater, Andertons and Thomann.
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