Difference between rosewood and ebony frerboard

[gerald]

Hi guys
I hope to find out more about the difference between an ebony fretboard and a rosewood one.
From my own experience after playing several guitars in comparison, i found that my fingers tend to get stuck on certain frets when i slide across a rosewood fretboard. It may be because its dry. I once applied lemon oil on one of my rosewood guitars but still find it abit uncomfortable to play.
While for ebony guitars the problem seems to be not so serious and its more of smooth in general. Well i have to admit that the guitar with ebony fretboard is one that is more expensive than the one with rosewood.
So my questions is: is it really the rosewood fretboard affecting the playability or is it because that other guitar is more expensive and the rosewood has no effect.
I would also like to know more about the oyher differences between them.
Thank you!

 

[Icel3m0nt3a]

There's a lot of information to be found on this by a quick google.

But generally, ebony is a harder wood. Means it is brighter, snappier and smoother to play on than rosewood. Many shredders prefer ebony fretboards as they feel it enables them to play fast licks better.

Rosewood has a warmer and slightly slower response than ebony, so generally if your ears are very capable, you will find that similar stratocasters with a rosewood board sound warmer than those with a maple board. Personally, I prefer rosewood boards as the response feels more natural to me. Ebony feels too snappy, more so than maple.

 

[Whammy]

Another thing is that some woods, despite not being smooth, can actually be very fast. Wenge is an extremely coarse and rough wood, but it is actually very very fast as a neck, but back to the topic of ebony vs rosewood, rosewood is definitely warmer, and ebony snappier

 

[an2]

So my questions is: is it really the rosewood fretboard affecting the playability or is it because that other guitar is more expensive and the rosewood has no effect.

Strangely structured question. But I shall try answering it to the best of my ability.

Rosewood is generally considered a lot softer than maple and ebony, thus I have a feeling it 'absorbs' the treble attack a little more than the other two. How it affects playability I have no idea, never happened to me, but I'm no good to begin with. (fetish for maple here)

Ebony is more expansive because they cut down many many trees in order to find the perfect piece of jet-black ebony with no "impurities", and there are already a shortage of those trees providing us with the Ebony fretboards. Taylor did an excellent video on youtube addressing the problem.

Hope that helps.