Goncalo Alves Neck/ Ebony Fretbaord

[arealken]

I have one of these Warmoth Goncalo Alves/ Ebony necks necks. mating it to an Warmoth Alder Strat body.

This is kind of the reverse of a Rosewood/ maple neck.

The Rosewood/ Maple has a Bright tone shaft wood with a Warm sounding fingerboard, while the Goncalo Alves Ebony  has a Warm sounding neck shaft with a with a Bright sounding fretbaord.

I was kind of bewildered about which pickups to use. Normally I use 60's sound Fender  type pickups for a Maple/ Rosewood, and and 50's pickups style for all Maple.

But with the weird mix of bright and warm, I wasn't sure..
I went with Van Zandt Vintage +'s, for a 60's sound .


EDIT- I just realized the Warm shaft and bright fretboard is the recipe for the Gibson LP Custom, which has warm tone Mahogany shaft and Ebony fingerboard ( although with the Warm mahogany body). So thicker fatter tone pickups might work so I think the 60's style might be a good choice.  I think maybe the Alder body is pretty balanced in tone and should not upset the apple cart in the overall tone picture in going ofr a 60's Strat tone.

Comments valued./

 

[musicispeace]

That sounds like a very interesting neck. For what it may be worth, I think you gotta just experiment sometimes and see what pleases your ear.

 

[ragamuffin]

I don't buy into the idea that woods have a major effect on electric tone, I love my goncalo/ebony neck on it's alder body. It's a fairly neutral sounding guitar acoustically.

 

[DustyCat]

I'm not expert, but I'd be curious to know the effect that bigger frets has on the quality of the tone.

I have a Goncalo Alves board on Canary Maple. The board is fully scalloped with GD6100's and there is a brightness in the acoustic tone (unplugged) that I want to attribute to the increase of mass (of the metal frets).

I could be dead wrong, and there may be other factors (double truss rod) so maybe someone here has an answer.

 

[Cagey]

I have a Goncalo Alves board on Canary Maple. The board is fully scalloped with GD6100's and there is a brightness in the acoustic tone (unplugged) that I want to attribute to the increase of mass (of the metal frets).

It's much more likely due to the straplocks  :laughing7:

If you don't have straplocks installed, look at the bridge. Bridges that are mounted directly to the body like Teles, hardtail Strats, etc. instead of on a couple of posts like Tune-O-Matics and their ilk are typically brighter/louder. How much so depends on the body wood, but it's almost always noticeable. For example, a Maple topped Mahogany Les Paul with a TOM on it will be nearly silent acoustically compared to an Alder Tele with one of those big 3 saddle bridge plates, even though in stock form the LP will likely have larger frets.