will Rosewood mean $$$

CoolCat

CoolCat

Well-known member
Im wondering about the Fender official stop of using Rosewood May 2017.
Will this be one of those $$$$ things where collectors snub the new replacement and the "real Rosewood" goes up in value?
It makes sense it could from a collector supply / demand ...rarity thing.
But I dont know. I have a two US Rosewood necks and two Squier Rosewood necks.
I dont know how to predict, I laughed at water in plastic bottles as the dumbest thing I ever saw and said "that will never last".

Can I add another $50 value for rosewood? or $100?
 
It will depend how good the replacement wood is. If Indian Rosewood is way better than it will be more desirable yeah. I've seen a lot of Richlite boards and my GF owns a guitar that has one, and I have to say they're fine overall but pretty awful for bends. There are a lot of articles about the death of guitar, and I think if something is going to kill it it will be something like this where they simply don't have good materials left to make enjoyable instruments.
 
Nola said:
It will depend how good the replacement wood is. If Indian Rosewood is way better than it will be more desirable yeah. I've seen a lot of Richlite boards and my GF owns a guitar that has one, and I have to say they're fine overall but pretty awful for bends. There are a lot of articles about the death of guitar, and I think if something is going to kill it it will be something like this where they simply don't have good materials left to make enjoyable instruments.
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I had a squire jazz bass a while back that had a "ebonal" fretboard. It looked and felt like ebony but it was totally synthetic. I was very impressed. I would just as soon have it as ebony as far as my experience with it. I did read up on it and it doaent age as well as real wood it seems. According to what I had read ebonal Will, at some point, develops scratched and worn places that adebpretty much going to be there permantly. With ebony you can rub it down with bore oil and it looks good again. Not so with synthetic boards.
 
jimistone said:
I had a squire jazz bass a while back that had a "ebonal" fretboard. It looked and felt like ebony but it was totally synthetic. I was very impressed. I would just as soon have it as ebony as far as my experience with it. I did read up on it and it doaent age as well as real wood it seems. According to what I had read ebonal Will, at some point, develops scratched and worn places that adebpretty much going to be there permantly. With ebony you can rub it down with bore oil and it looks good again. Not so with synthetic boards.
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Yeah, the Richlite on her guitar was fine for fingerpicking and chording, but if you tried to do lead bends on it, it "gripped' for lack of better term and felt too much resistance. IMO maple and then ebony are the best boards for bending. Rosewood even has a little grip to it.
I'd imagine on a bass it is fine since bends are rare.

They're making guitars out of metals, glass, and carbon fiber now so we'll see where this all goes.
 
Stuff becomes collectible when the market decides, based on the whims of opinion and rarity. Considering the volume of Squier guitars that have been built, you can probably rule out rarity as a driver for a long, long time. So then the question is whether people who, if they're looking Squier necks, are probably building or repairing a relatively inexpensive *caster, would choose to pay more for one just because it had a bit of rosewood, when there's always 3rd party maple necks and who knows what other options in the future. But, maybe there will be some folks with Bitcoin to spare who will snap them up. I don't know.

Personally, I've got 2 acoustics with ebony and one with Richlite and they're indistinguishable from a playing POV (and both superior to rosewood for many reasons). Now, I don't have the frets ground down to the fingerboard, so when I bend, I'm pushing the strings on top of the frets and not on wood; but I've also done enough fret leveling/crowning and general maintenance on the both of them that I can't perceive any drawbacks yet. I'll be replacing a bunch of frets on the Richlite board in a week or so when I have a break, so my opinion might change then!
 
There is good rosewood and not so good rosewood. Like on my 1966 stratocaster and my 2007 les paul....the rosewood is so dark that it almost looks black like ebony. Some of the modern rosewood fretboard are so lightly colored they almost look orange or pink even, with a grain that is not very tight at all. Man, I personally hate that look. I think it probably stems from a shortage of old growth rosewood.
So, I think dark colored rosewooded necks, (with the correct fender shaped headstock) with tight fretboard grains, will increase in value. Therefore if a cheapo guitar, like a squire, is going for less that a stand alone neck, people will snap them up. If people snap enough of them up they will increase in value.
I can't see those anemic looking pale loose grained fretboard ones being desirable and increasing in value.
But, I never would have believed that those sorry assed 70's era fender strats would ever be desireable.....so there ya go.
 
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