Bound fingerboards

[Tony Miller]

I’ve only every seen bound fingerboards on the SCGC website. My T13 Redwood OM has black binding, which is almost imperceptible from the ebony fingerboard… I’m just wondering if SCGC have only done/do bound boards? And if so, is there a practical reasons there are no unbound fingerboards?

Cheers

[BOWIE]

My redwood 000 has dark tortoise binding that is similar to what you describe. I think most or all of them are bound because SCGC pride themselves on making high end instruments. They tend to not do budgetary things like no binding.

[Tony Miller]

You may well be right, however I don’t personally identify a quality difference between bound and unbound fingerboards in a guitar… To me a bound fingerboard adds contrast, not quality… I wonder if there is any other reason?  To my mind it could adds a potential failure point upon gluing (I believe Martin have had binding issues in the past – not SCGC) and would require extra care with re-frets, so given the extra care required to add it, I wondered if there were another distinct advantage?…

[indexless]

Hey Tom,  let’s see, good question

[tadol]

I’m pretty sure bound fretboards are entirely an aesthetic thing – they can just use ebony rips so you don’t see the slot ends, or they can use a contrasting color, or they can even use multiple colors – quite an array of effects available.  But even when the slot ends are left visible, most luthiers will trim back the tang of the fret so that if the fretboard shrinks, you don’t have the tang hanging out over the edge, as that would be a major complaint right away.  But thats just my opinion –

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