It's the only one I've seen, though, I think. Kiesel's also made at least one Osiris with a flamed maple fretboard. Give me stripes, or nothing.įlamed maple screws with my eyes with how they sometimes and sometimes don't align with the frets. Zebrawood can look really cool, but I definitely don't like it when it's more flat-swawn, with cathedralling. It sorta works with walnut, but I think it can work with buckeye or black limba bodies, and then if you're putting a color on the body wood, then the natural wood mis-match isn't really an issue.įrom a functional standpoint, the lighter parts of the PME are the softest, but they are still about as hard as hard maple, so it's not really a concern, per se. On Kiesels, unless it's their 'mastergrade', the Pale Moon Ebony boards they use often have too much pale yellow in them, and the yellow, to my eye, has a touch of green in it which clashes with some 'warm' colored woods. I've seen some other fretboards that would be impossible for me to navigate. The Ibanez Tree Of Life would be the limit for me as busy, but yet manageable. Visually busy fretboards may be hell to navigate, specially if they feature strong color contrasts with too much visual texture or inlays. To me, having a dark fingerboard allows the frets and strings to visually pop with ease, something that doesn't happen as good with brighter (mapple) fretboards. Personally, I don't like busy fretboards, I like them clean with minimal visual references (I guide myself on the side dots most of the time), but for quick one octave position jumps, surface dots or other inlays are quite helpful. Inlays are most of the time just an ornament, but one will find them as visual references as well for neck positions one regularly goes to. The thing is that we do eye read the fretboard when we are playing, the aesthetics are important, but must be functional as well. for a short period of time, but nevertheless, confusion. I once got so used to play with an unbound guitar of mine that when I picked up one that had binding, the binding suggested an extra string and that created quite the confusion in my head. I could obviously insist with it (would have meant buying it), but I wasn't that interested on the guitar itself. like too much light in the fingerboard that blinded me from tracking the frets and strings visually. I only played once with a guitar that had a maple fingerboard in a shop and found it super awkward.

They are all with Rosewood but one (fretless) which is loaded with Ebony. My guitars are all with dark fingerboards, some with inlays, some without, some are bound others aren't. You'll get more tone control with an EQ pedal than with the fretboard wood. My opinion, however, is that any hard wood will do, their interference in the overall tone is minimal as long as they are hard wood.

If you're going for aesthetics only, well, that's your take.

Master grade pale moon ebony fretboard