Leaderboard

Channel bound fingerboards

Updown

Hero Member
Messages
2,606
Well Fender are doing them ....
http://www.fender.com/en-AU/series/fender-select/?utm_source=Newsletter-June4&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Channel-Bound-MainFeature&EDID=OJZ8AED-ORWIA-6VZ4TD-JJ8UV-YWIF-v1#overview

Will Warmoth be offering this too ?  :toothy10:
 
Expect this to become the norm, and your fingerboard material to become a veneer. Maybe not immediately, but dissimilar wood cost + cheaper machining costs = painted on rosewood
 
swarfrat said:
Expect this to become the norm, and your fingerboard material to become a veneer. Maybe not immediately, but dissimilar wood cost + cheaper machining costs = painted on rosewood
Low budget production models for sure,
But if, just IF W started offering this option, think about all the lovely exotic combos you could come up with.
 
When I first saw those I thought "WoW!" but then I realized what the gents above did - when it's inlaid, you can't see how thick it is. And just like Gibson, who actively advertised their new laminated-for-tone fingerboard for 13 seconds before everybody squealed "Das' PLYwood..."; Fender is now in the MBA-driven mindset that:

As long as guitarists are SO stupid,
it would be morally wrong NOT to take advantage of them.


Just like your phone company, your electrical company, you drug provider, large corporations spend more time trying to figure out a way to cheat you than they do making stuff you want. Oh here I go again....

(Gibson didn't stop making plywood fingerboards, but they did stop advertising them...)
 
SmileyShocked-1vvpqbs.png


Most important is ... THAT's NOT VINTAGE SPECS!
 
I, personally, greatly dislike bound fretboards. Hate may be a better word. So I don't really care if they make 'em or not; I'd never order one in this lifetime.
 
Day-mun said:
I, personally, greatly dislike bound fretboards. Hate may be a better word. So I don't really care if they make 'em or not; I'd never order one in this lifetime.

Is it just an aesthetic peeve? I love the look of a bound board, but they tend to feel pretty sucky, and limit bending. This seems like a great alternative, It should feel great, judging the looks of it. Not to mention, it just looks snazzy.
 
Yeah, it's looks... and more than that. I can't put my finger on it... just something (or things) about them disgusts me. Fret ends overlaping looks yucky, -the worst is when the binding is actually cut to fit up around the end of the fret wire. GEEESH!!! that sends shivers up my spine like nails on a chalkboard.

-what is gonna happen when the finger sweat and moisture seep into that inlay joint where unfinished rosewood (or picture-of-rosewood) meets finished maple? On unbound necks, the finish can cover the joint w/o interfering with the played surface of the board... Idunno, looks like a mess waiting to happen to me...
 
I get that. One thing, though. Note the fret ends - are they hidden? It appears the frets reach the sides of the neck, but the ends don't stick out... Am I right?
 
That's better lookin' than the Gibson trick of saving a few mm's of fretwire by making the fret-ends fit inside the binding, then trimming down the binding to make it look like a castle wall from the side. -GAH! -That just makes me feel like I'm gonna cough bile!
-But, then again, my feelings are that anything Gibson can do, Fender can do better. And for a better price.

In the end, I say "to each their own", but I'll never buy one... just sayin'.

 
I like old gibbys, but Epiphone is beating the crap out of Gibson right now. I love the Epiphone hollow bodies... Very nice.
 
Undercutting fret tangs so they fit inside binding the right way to do it, and I agree that the Gibson idea of leaving a little plastic lump at the end of the frets, instead of undercutting them, is really lame. When they started that, it was pre-bent strings, and it's just one of many really dumb things that are done to recreate stupid ideas, just because they're old ideas.

I'm not a fan of doing things to guitars that are completely unnecessary anyway. The reason binding was put on guitars and mandolins in the first place was to try to seal up the end grain of body woods, because in the 1930's and 1940's instruments were subjected to some pretty severe climate changes. There was absolutely no such thing as air-conditioning, and very few homes or buildings had anything resembling central heat, and the humidity was just... whatever it was. So a guitar kept in the upper half of America could quite reasonably expect temperatures ranging from the 50's to 100 and a bit in summer - inside your house -  and any guitar in the south could expect as least some 90+ percent humidity and a few really cold spells. But binding on a solidbody has always been cosmetic, and as glues and finishes made out of things more durable than cow hooves and ground-up insects came along, it became worthless on hollowbodies too. There's nothing that binding can do that superglue can't do better.
 
I get a kick out of the folks who are both anti laminate and pro set necks. Maybe someone should just skip the wood and make one entirely out of glue. Oh wait, Ned Steinberger already did.
 
Back
Top