Baked Maple vs Rosewood fretboards

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ido1957

ido1957

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I was looking at a Les Paul Special last night and it looked like a bargain at around $900 CDN all in. then I noticed it had a Baked Maple fretboard. I haven't seen or played one yet.

I'm disappointed about the gov't confiscating Gibson's rosewood - but that's a whole other thread.

Has anyone been able to try the baked maple fretboards yet and if so how do they feel in comparison to rosewood? Any sonic differences? Are we looking at lots of baked maple in the future?
Will that (partiallly) differentiate the expensive Gibsons from the cheaper ones?
 
I think the baked maple looks nice. To my dumb fingers though, I don't notice much of a difference. I suspect the sound should be brighter maybe? But I didn't notice that either. I think this is just something for the purists to freak out about.
 
As far as feel goes, no difference (and anyone who says differently should go sniff another cork).

Tone wise though, yeah it sounds different to my ears.

The problem is I don't have and have never owned 2 identical guitars each with that as the only variable for testing so saying for sure is impossible. I think body wood, neck through vs bolt on, and pickup choice have way more effect on tone than the neck though.
 
I'm not really a Gibson player and have never used "baked maple" but I've got a bunch of guitars with maple or rosewood fretboards and I can say - without any kind of cork sniffing - that they both sound and feel different. With the following opinions, I'm talking about telecasters, as I have one with a rosewood board and one with maple, both with stock pups.

Maple feels quicker under my fingers - that is to say, that I feel less friction when moving about the neck and most of my guitars with maple boards seem to have thinner frets (i'm not sure why... accident or sub-conscious purchase choice, I can't say). Maple boards also seem to lend to a brighter tone.

Rosewood feels softer and has a bit more friction... I tend to use my tele with the RW when I'm doing rhythm tracks, and for some reason it's got medium jumbo frets (my other guitar with RW board has jumbos). This guitar also seems less bright than the one with maple and I can only attribute this to the difference in fretboards.

Ultimately, as with everything else in instruments, it boils down to preference. I used to be an exclusively RW type of guy until I got my maple tele and then fell in love with the tone/feel of maple. Now, I've got two teles and a jazzmaster with maple boards and I end up using them more than my rosewood guitars. It may be different with Gibson guitars, as they tend to come stock with 'buckers but I'd imagine that although the differences may be more subtle, they'd still be there.
 
I hadn't heard Gibson was doing this - visually, does it look like a dark maple board, or is it actually baked to the color of rosewood?

This is an option with growing popularity on high end customs - Suhr and Anderson, especially, seem to be doing it a lot lately. The idea I guess is to heat maple to extremely high heat (normally past the ignition point) in an oxygen-free enviroment to remove as much moisture as possible from the wood, which is supposed to make it significantly more stable (to the point where these guys are now offering full warrenties on flamed and birdseye necks that have been baked, which they won't do on untreated maple).

It's something I'm really curious to try - usually the wood is roasted to sort of a vintage tint hue, so it looks great. I still have some illusion of one day snagging a Suhr Modern 7, and I'd want to order a roasted maple neck when I do.
 
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